


and then shall that wicked be revealed

by hiza-chan (callunavulgari)



Series: and then shall that wicked be revealed [1]
Category: BioShock, Doctor Who, Supernatural
Genre: Crossover, Dark, F/M, Gore, M/M, Superwhoshock, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-29
Updated: 2012-04-29
Packaged: 2017-11-04 12:27:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/hiza-chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel's gone missing, and finding one wayward angel in all of space and time is a bit like finding a needle in a haystack. Good thing he left a message behind—now there's only the matter of figuring out what this mysterious "Rapture" is. In which the splicers have the phone box, the Doctor has an angel for a BFF, Castiel uses a Little Sister for a temporary vessel, and everything’s really about family in the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and then shall that wicked be revealed

**Author's Note:**

> Post SPN 7.20 and DW 6.13, in an imaginary world where the Leviathans have been taken care of. Title taken from 2 Thessalonians 2:8 - “And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:” 
> 
> Dear Eltea, Tierfal, Steve, and Faor: All four of you are perfect human beings, and I appreciate all the hand holding you did this last month. I'm sorry you all had to suffer through misplaced commas and wonky sentences, and I love all of you. So, so, so very much. And Eltea, thank you for staying up late at night months ago and helping me really stitch this story together. I couldn't have done this without any of you. And caz2y5? Thank you so much for your patience. You're a saint. [Art Masterpost](http://caz2y5.livejournal.com/54538.html) and [the playlist.](http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL39EA2C18439CD46F) Story was originally inspired by the gorgeous vid that's first in the playlist and some gorgeous gifs on tumblr.

 

 

  
It isn't often that upon meeting someone for the first time, an unbreakable bond is forged. It happens maybe a handful of times in a person's short life, and almost always, the bonds are overlooked. Overestimated. Shrugged off like it's an everyday occurrence to look a stranger in the eye and feel like the broken, jagged pieces inside of you have finally come together.  
  
The Winchesters have spoiled Castiel.  
  
He remembers a time when he'd only ever experienced that instant connection once—when the stars and the moons still gleamed with God's Grace and a man wrapped in a truly ridiculous scarf first showed him that there were other ways to view the universe. Back when he was Castiel, angel of the lord, and not Cas, eternal errand boy of the Winchesters, and both the hope and the downfall of Heaven.  
  
The Doctor tells him of the Time Lords, of Gallifrey and fields of red grass that stretch for miles and miles—he tells Castiel of friends he once had—of Romanadvoratrelundar, of Koschei, and of Susan—Sarah Jane Smith and Leela of the Seveteem. He tells him about the universe, outside the realm of Castiel's father (although Castiel will always believe that nothing is quite that far out of reach.)  
  
This is the time that he meets the Doctor, when the Doctor will teach him the things that he will need to know. He will think of the Doctor the moment Dean Winchester looks him in the eye and whispers, "If there was anything worth dying for, this is it."  
  
This is the time that Castiel learns to run.

  
.

 

The Doctor didn't mean to lose him. Not really. Accidents happen, of course, usually as a result of poor timing, or a bad call, or in this case, giant lizard people set out to destroy the galaxy. And it isn't like he's an object, that he can just get misplaced like some toy.  
  
Because the thing is, Castiel is one of his oldest friends, so it isn't as if the Doctor's going to stop looking for him. If they were normal people, the Doctor would let Castiel find his way back on his own; the man is, after all, completely and utterly capable of taking care of himself. But they aren't normal people, not by the angel's standards, and not by the Time Lord's. They have a penchant for getting into trouble, and the thing is—angel of the lord getting kidnapped by lizard men? Not the best way to start a story.  
  
The year is 1500 BC, and the Doctor has known Castiel for approximately half his lifetime. It’s been four hundred and fifty years of Castiel popping in on him in awkward situations—four hundred and fifty years of distress calls and misplaced calculators and conversations that start like this: "Hey Cas, did I stick my sonic screwdriver in your coat the last time I saw you, and no—thank you, that was not a euphemism, Jack, mind yourself—but really Castiel, I kind of need that back—"  
  
Four hundred and fifty years, and he's known Castiel since before he had a vessel, back when Cas was just space dust that looked a little bit iffy and something that might have been wings if the Doctor took a couple shots of Rose's tequila and squinted a lot. This certainly isn't the first time that the Doctor has misplaced Castiel in a temporal rift or left him on a planet where his Grace is completely useless. Why, there’d been that time in Xanageii of the Third Sun, a tiny little planet in a tiny little galaxy located at the very edges of the Virgo Cluster, where Castiel had managed to get lost among the locals in the largest shopping mall in the universe, only to be found hours later in a day spa, calmly getting a pedicure with a very confused look on his face.  
  
Castiel will, as always, find his way back into the TARDIS, glaring and spitefully wiping lizard goop all over the TARDIS console (the Doctor will let _her_ chide him for that one) and the Doctor will protest that he _tried_ to look for him, he really did, but there were these things and a planet of chocolate that really needed his attention. Castiel will sigh and hold up a hand; interrupt him with rolled eyes and a sharp, "You got distracted, yes, Doctor, I _know_."  
  
Castiel can take care of himself. Big angel and all that, can tie his own shoelaces and everything (except for how the Doctor is pretty sure he can't, in fact, tie them).  
  
It isn't the first time the Doctor misplaces Castiel, and it certainly won't be the last.  
  
.  
  
The first time (but not quite the _earliest_ time) the Doctor meets him, Castiel is bleeding. He has blood smeared across his chest, sigils etched into lines and lines of borrowed skin, but that isn't the first thing that the Doctor notices about him. No, the first thing that the Doctor notices about this fascinating creature, are his _wings._  
  
Afterwards, the Doctor will notice how the light seeps through the gashes; he'll realize that the creature inhabiting this man's body is hundreds of thousands of years older than him. The man who used to be Jimmy Novak isn't even really alive anymore, life snuffed out like a candle the first time that this body was destroyed, but wasn't important enough to whoever stitched the fabric back together.  
  
He'll realize, that for the first time in over two hundred years, that something in the universe looks at him and sees him as little more than a child.  
  
And then he'll remember his manners and help clean up the blood, but first—first he notices those wings.  
  
.  
  
The first time that _Castiel_ meets the Doctor, he is ginger: pale and freckled, dying.  
  
He looks at Castiel as though he's a cherished friend and when Castiel, concerned, bends closer and asks, "Where does it hurt?" the Doctor sighs, eyes glassy and unfocused, and attempts a strained smile. He whispers, "I know that face."  
  
The Doctor does call him "old friend"—several times and with increasing delirium, clutching the backs of Castiel's coat like he's intimately familiar with the threads of its existence. The stranger strokes a bloody hand down his cheek and breathes, "But you look so young."  
  
Castiel is still young: newly-formed, wings fresh and heavy upon his back, his Grace still sparking with the lightning-sharp shocks of God's touch. The universe is fresh, though some parts of it have flourished more than others. This planet, for example: ripe with life already when there are planets still crackling together, earth and lightning and fire.  
  
He is arrogant in his faith and his wings span planets. Yet something grounds him, so he waits with one of his Father's creations until his breath starts to shudder.  
  
The first time Castiel meets the Doctor, he doesn't know him by that name. He's just a stranger that Castiel had held until he died, a body that he'd burned, ashes scattered across a pale river.  
  
Castiel won’t put the pieces together for years and years, until he sees that pale, freckled face again- grinning at him from across the TARDIS console, saying "How do I look? Am I ginger, yet?" as he twists and turns like he hasn't just taken a billion volts of electricity to the brain.  
  
.  
  
The Doctor once described time as wibbly wobbly—as timey wimey—as stuff; but Castiel knows that it isn't quite that simple, the same way that he knew Dean would never understand if he'd tried to explain how Castiel had gotten him to nineteen seventy-three in the blink of an eye.  
  
Timelines never really match up correctly when both parties are time travelers. River Song once taught him that over stolen wine on a lost moon in the Gamma Quadrant. They watched meteors pass overhead, and she told him her story.  
  
He'll never have enough time to tell her his own, but he did his best to summarize.  
  
.  
  
The second time the Doctor sees Castiel, he isn't quite as bloody. In fact, the second time the Doctor sees Castiel, Castiel doesn't even have a body. An angel's true form can't quite be explained away with lion heads and bodies of rams—telling a human what an angel really looks like is a bit like trying to explain physics to mud.  
  
An angel in its truest form looks like space dust and ice rings, a section of space that isn't quite a black hole or a nebulae, but isn't quite dead space either. It has an energy all of its own, like the static charge of a lightning storm in the summer—which isn't to say that angels just hang out in the void of space, or that they _always_ look like remnants of dead stars, but when Castiel tries to explain the concept of an angel's existence, the Doctor deems it a bit too weird to even think about poking.  
  
So angels are stardust, and Castiel's six wings are constellations stretching out behind him.  
  
"I was waiting for you," Castiel tells him.  
  
"I really don't think you're going to fit in the TARDIS like that," the Doctor shouts back.  
  
.  
  
River Song advises him to keep a book—a journal, if you will.  
  
"Trust me, sweetie," she grins; "it'll help."  
  
.  
  
Castiel doesn't ever write down their first meeting. He will never pen out the Doctor's final resting place—be it in Enochian or Hebrew or the language of the stars—that the Doctor's ashes reside on a planet that's oceans gleam purple, its mountains a vibrant green, ripe with tropical flora. The Doctor promises to never peek, tells him that he's well-aware of the dangers of seeing his own future, but Castiel isn't stupid.  
  
The Doctor is a curious creature, worse than Dean in a way, because at least Dean has the sense to pull back a bit once he's realized that he's gotten himself into trouble again. The Doctor, on the other hand, just pushes—keeps on pushing, and once he ends up in danger? Well, all the more adventure that way.  
  
He keeps the Doctor's grave a secret, hides it within the depths of his Grace and keeps the memory there, buried.  
  
(Most of the time.)  
  
.  
  
"Have we done Ragnarok, yet? Met Thor? Explored the roots of Yggdrasil? How about Loki? You got along with him so very well, almost like brothers. No? Damn. We had such a grand time—you should look forward to that."  
  
"Lucifer has fallen," Castiel whispers, and the Doctor flinches, paging back to the very start.  
  
"Ah yes," he whispers. "Very early, then."  
  
.  
  
The second time Castiel meets the Doctor, he's wearing a ridiculous scarf and has dark curls that manage to get everywhere. It's the second time, but Castiel will think it's the first for a few hundred years. He learns the Doctor's name, and the Doctor teaches him how to run.  
  
.  
  
The Doctor will never tell him, but when Castiel comes to him mere moments after he's dragged Dean Winchester out of hell, there is already a change in him—a slight shift from the man who thought he knew everything to the man who looked into hell and saw the only soul truly worth freeing.  
  
It doesn't matter, though, because one day Castiel will realize it himself.  
  
.  
  
"No—Dean, _Dean_. I'm busy."  
  
The Doctor watches Castiel through the reflection, ignores the burning star just beyond the tempered glass in favor of watching an angel pace around the ship's cargo bay. It's almost funny, how Castiel doesn't realize how much he actually _enjoys_ the sound of Dean's voice, light years away but still tucked close to his ear.  
  
"Dean, no. I can't. I'm—" he glances around the bay, at the alien technology that these people are attempting to smuggle to other planets, and decides against whatever he'd been about to say. "—out of reach at the moment."  
  
The Doctor can hear a tinny voice through the speaker ("—what the hell do you mean out of reach? Cas, we need you to get your feathery ass down here before this whole thing explodes in our faces!") and smiles when Castiel's shoulders start to slump. He wonders what this Dean would do if he took the phone from Castiel and told the wretched human that Castiel was busy—that he really didn't exist to just sit around on some cloud and wait for the Winchester's to have a use for him.  
  
"Please, Cas," the voice says, and the Doctor closes his eyes. Well, that's it then.  
  
He listens to Castiel hang up the phone and doesn't turn around when he asks, "Boys need you again?"  
  
"Of course." Precise, monotonous, no inkling at all that his borrowed heart is pounding double time, his wings already itching for flight. "But Doctor—"  
  
"Yes, yes, the weapons."  
  
And he does turn then, fixing Castiel with a look of amusement. "Don't you worry, Cas; I'll keep an eye out for them."  
  
Castiel nods once, grateful, and with the sound of ruffled feathers, he is gone.  
  
The Doctor shakes his head.  
  
Humans.  
  
.  
  
"So let me get this straight. You—no really Cas, this is kind of ridiculous. You're searching for Heaven’s weapons with an alien who travels through time? Do I have that right?"  
  
"Time and Space, but yes. That is correct."  
  
"Right, so—what? He finds a weapon and just beams you up? Beam me up, Scotty, we've gotta find us some weapons."  
  
"I don't understand that reference, Dean."  
  
.  
  
At first, he is somewhat reluctant to introduce Dean to the Doctor. Dean isn't known for his patience, and the Doctor has never dealt well with ignorant humans—especially ones of the self-righteous variety.  
  
There are also the guns, and the killing, and how the Doctor would never look at a tortured soul and think to burn it.  
  
But there isn't much to do about it when the TARDIS materializes a few feet from the Impala, in the middle of some cheap motel's parking lot, and the Doctor steps out, whistling cheerfully with River Song at his heels.  
  
"Hello, sweetie," she grins, and beside him, Dean splutters a bit when she goes up on tiptoe before Castiel to press a kiss to his cheek.  
  
"How was the honeymoon?" he asks instead, because the Doctor is assessing Dean like he's a piece of machinery that he doesn't quite understand, and that never ends well.  
  
River beams at him. "Splendid! Aepil XIV is always wonderful this time of year, as I'm sure you remember. Or-" she pauses and taps a finger against her lips, "have we done that yet? Please tell me we have. It's absolutely gorgeous, Castiel, there are these temples devoted to their sun gods, and what they've done with nuclear fission—they created their own sun! Right there in the temple!"  
  
Castiel smiles at her. He hasn't been there yet, but he's sure it'll be somewhere in his near future.  
  
Dean makes a strangled little noise of protest when the Doctor steps in close, stroking a finger along his jacket and then sticking it in his mouth. He brightens—"Oh yes, Castiel was quite right about you."  
  
“What the fuck, dude?”  
  
Dean takes three steps back and when his hand automatically goes for the gun tucked in the waistband of his jeans, Castiel steps calmly between them. “It’s wonderful to see you, Doctor.”  
  
The Doctor grins brightly at him and goes in for a hug. It’s only practice that keeps Castiel from going stiff and unyielding in his arms. The Doctor has this thing about hugs. He likes doling them out and is absolutely tickled pink when he receives them—and while Castiel appreciates them from time to time, there are other times when he could do without them.  
  
This is one of those times when he really could have done without it, especially with Dean glaring over his shoulder as Castiel awkwardly wraps his arms around the Doctor’s torso.  
  
Sam breaks the awkward silence when he turns to River and compliments her dress.  
  
River and Sam hit it off spectacularly.  
  
The Doctor and Dean do not.  
  
It probably hadn’t helped that when they went out for lunch at the nearby diner, River taught Sam how to properly break out of a jail cell and the Doctor taught him how to splice atoms together.  
  
.  
  
"Yes, I'm with him, Dean."  
  
A pause.  
  
"No Dean, I'm not in the TARDIS right now."  
  
Another pause, and Dean's voice on the line, like static—"Then where the hell are you?"  
  
"Barcelona."  
  
And then—"No, the planet."  
  
Amy rolls her eyes at him, and the Doctor grins back. "How much do you want to bet that the wife will want him home in time for dinner?" she asks, and he gives her a long look.  
  
"I have never been stupid enough to take that bet, Amelia Pond."  
  
Castiel hangs up.  
  
"I have to go," he says, and Amy laughs at him.  
  
.  
  
"Do you believe in monsters?" a woman asks him in Morocco, and Castiel nearly smiles.  
  
"Do you believe in angels?" he asks her.  
  
She'll never notice that he didn't answer her question.  
  
.  
  
He's got one foot into the TARDIS when Dean says, "I want to go with you this time."  
  
Castiel turns around, his face completely and utterly still, already imagining the disaster that would result from Dean and the Doctor being in the same place for too long.  
  
Ahead of him, Martha is reclining against the TARDIS console, regarding him with amusement over a steaming cup of tea. The Doctor meets his eyes, and calls, "Oh just let him in already—he'll just pine if you don't."  
  
So Castiel steps aside, and allows Dean and Sam to step through the door. Sam’s eyes go wide in awe, but it’s Dean who speaks first.  
  
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me."  
  
Martha grins at the flabbergasted look on Dean's face. "Bigger on the inside, right?"  
  
.  
  
The thing that Dean doesn't seem to understand yet is that he's completely besotted with Castiel. Over the moon with it, really, but Dean—see, he's not exactly the best at dealing with his own emotions. The Doctor's known that Castiel's been in love with the man for years; but it wasn't until he met Dean that he realized the feeling was mutual, just neither seemed to know it yet.  
  
He watches them bicker over a cup of tea that Castiel is sipping, something about tea being for sissies—but what's really important is the hand that Dean's got wrapped around the back of Castiel's neck, helplessly intimate, his thumb stroking along the skin that meets Castiel's hairline. And the ridiculous thing is, they don't even realize it.  
  
Jack had taken one look at the two of them and started laughing so hard that the Doctor was afraid he'd bust something. When Dean had glared at him, Jack held his hands up in helpless surrender, still giggling into his collar.  
  
"What's so funny?"  
  
Jack dissolved into laughter again, and curled a finger into the hem of an amused Ianto Jones's coat. "Nothing, pretty boy. You'll find out eventually."  
  
.  
  
When Castiel falls, the Doctor doesn't find out until he gets a phone call from Castiel while he's watching the Earth burn, Rose at his side, her hand tucked into his.  
  
"Castiel?"  
  
"Doctor."  
  
Rose tilts her head at him, an uncertain smile curling around her lips. The Doctor makes a face at her, then makes some very abrupt hand motions that convey angels and their emotionally constipated boyfriends. "Why the bloody hell are you calling me? Come find me."  
  
He hangs up.  
  
Moments later, his phone chimes again.  
  
When he picks up, Castiel sighs. "I can't."  
  
.  
  
"Well you've certainly gotten yourself into a pinch, haven't you?"  
  
Castiel is tucked into crisp white sheets, hospital blues making him appear more naked than the crumpled, blistered wings on his back.  
  
"Yes. It would appear so."  
  
.  
  
The Doctor isn't there the second time that Castiel dies. He's thousands of years and a few solar systems away, but he feels it.  
  
Dean won't have time to call him, with his brother falling into Hell and his friend having his neck snapped in front of him. He won't have time to plead with the Doctor to change things—because there are remnants of Castiel dripping down his neck; blood and brain matter and shards of bone clinging to his skin like grains of sand.  
  
He won't have time to call, but he thinks it.  
  
He thinks it right before Lucifer attempts to rearrange his face and again when his brothers fall into hell with the angels—like Neverland and the fairies, like Martha and her satellites, I do believe in the Doctor, I do, I do—now come save them, you dick.  
  
He thinks it in the aftermath, when he looks at Bobby's corpse and the ground that's sealed itself back together, all green grass and gravestones.  
  
And then Castiel is there again, with a smile and a healing touch, and he won't have to think it anymore.  
  
.  
  
There's a world out there, in the dregs of space, that most people wouldn't care about. A junk yard—a graveyard for machines—past, present, and future. An entire planet of spare parts.  
  
This is the place that the Doctor takes Dean the first time he has him aboard, just to watch the love unfold across Castiel's face as he watches Dean take it all in.  
  
.  
  
Castiel doesn't ever really tell her much about the Winchesters. She reads between the lines, the crows feet and the creases of laughter on the face of an older Castiel, the shine of the younger's eyes—River pages through his and the Doctor's stories, and takes them apart. The love is obvious, even before Castiel really _felt_ it. But less so, are the glimpses of the real Dean Winchester. Though she's sure that Castiel is aware of the man's faults, they're tucked to the side, nearly out of reach, the same way one would tuck away the memory of their spouse doing something so erroneous that it was necessary to forget it in order to keep loving them.  
  
Castiel is so in love with Dean Winchester that it sometimes catches her off guard, the thought that someone millions of years old could love one insignificant little creature so _very_ much. With the Doctor, she understands. The Doctor truly believes that there is no such thing as insignificance, that every creature is beautiful and brilliant and _impossible_ in its own way. Castiel is not like that and never has been. While he finds beauty in his Father’s creations, he has never been blind to their faults. Castiel, who once had to be told that it was impolite to refer to human beings as insects, is now so completely in love that he’d do anything for a creature he’d once thought so beneath him.  
  
When she meets Dean Winchester, she hates him on sight. Arrogant, narcissistic, and downright impossible. He reminds her of herself.  
  
In a timeline that does not exist, she will rule the world with him. Their lovers dead, stranded in a world that is not theirs, they will triumph time and time again, until they make it back to their own reality, their loved ones at their fingertips once more.  
  
For him, this is still in his future. She does not tell him.  
  
Spoilers.  
  
.  
  
The thing that none of them know is that the Doctor has met Sam Winchester before.  
  
They met in a library, when Sam's voice still crackled and popped, hair flopping down over his brow—tickling his eyes when he leaned over a book.  
  
Sam was looking for something.  
  
The first words that the Doctor will ever say to Sam Winchester are this: "Try this one. You'll find what you're looking for. Promise."  
  
Sam won't remember it when he's older, but the Doctor will look at him—towering now, a positive skyscraper, and think that the little lost boy in the library might have found his answer.  
  
.  
  
When Castiel becomes corrupt, the Doctor doesn’t find out at first. Castiel still comes to him, even as he squanders most of his time away with Crowley in a dank room that smells of blood and excrement. He tortures, or more accurately, watches as dozens of creatures are played with—yanked around and made to dangle like a puppet on a string for the King of Hell.  
  
He makes a deal with a demon, because it’s preferable to disturbing Dean. Wrenching Dean from this new life of his—happy and in love with a gorgeous woman, raising a little boy... it’s unthinkable. Watching Dean with them makes something deep inside ache, but Dean is happy like this. That is all that matters.  
  
So he fights and kills, spending most of his time with a demon that smells like decay.  
  
Then Sam happens, soulless Sam, and Death gives it back to him. Puts it up behind a wall. His friends abandon him, after all this time, and Castiel reaches for power. He takes it into himself, and proclaims himself God.  
  
He watches Dean’s face twist with horror and pain, and past all the other souls inside him, he can feel his Grace shrink back, away from Dean’s pain.  
  
He tries to reshape the world, and only at his worst does he attempt to call the only other friend he has.  
  
The Doctor does not answer, so Castiel goes to Dean.  
  
Getting rid of the souls hurts more than it should. “I feel regret,” he whispers, and later he promises Dean that he will find a way to redemption.  
  
The creatures in his chest squirm, and Castiel fights them for seconds before he is overpowered.  
  
They squirm and fester and his body cannot handle—  
  
The water closes over his head.  
  
He sleeps.  
  
.  
  
Emmanuel never sleeps.  
  
Emmanuel does not eat or drink.  
  
He slept with his wife just the once, on their honeymoon, and his heart trembled. It did not feel right, and he is thankful that when he tells Daphne this, she smiles sadly and accepts. She is a loving woman, faithful, and when she slices her palm open while cooking, she does not fear when he closes her wound with a touch of his hand.  
  
Emmanuel spends nine months with her, healing the sick and injured when he can, and wondering just what he is missing.  
  
When a stranger shows up on his doorstep, killing some monster with smoke and ashes and death in its features, he looks at this stranger, and some of the pressure in his chest eases.  
  
He has found what his heart was looking for.  
  
When the stranger, Dean, speaks of sick brothers and demons, Emmanuel does not have to think about it.  
  
The stranger asks for his help.  
  
He goes.  
  
After all, his heart knows that this man is no stranger.  
  
.  
  
Castiel remembers.  
  
.  
  
Castiel finds redemption in the clarity of Sam’s eyes and in the corner of Lucifer’s smile.  
  
.  
  
“Doctor,” he whispers.  
  
Meg laughs at him, and Lucifer joins her.  
  
“I’m no Doctor, Clarence. But right now, I’m your nurse, so take your pills and go rock-a-bye angel.”  
  
He takes the pills.  
  
Lucifer laughs and laughs.  
  
Castiel does not sleep.  
  
.  
  
The Doctor comes to him, his smile sad, River Song at his heels. She pets his hair and tells him stories, curling up on the bed with him, the train of her dress falling over the side. The Doctor sits in the chair by her side, unconcerned with Lucifer sitting on the table at his elbow.  
  
“He’s not real, Cas. You know that.”  
  
He nods. Castiel does know, just like how he knows that every night when Lucifer claws his intestines free and shows him visions of his friends in agony, none of it is real. It still feels true, though.  
  
When he was young, Lucifer had taught him how to laugh.  
  
Now, Lucifer reminds him how to scream.  
  
.  
  
River reads to him from her diary.  
  
“Don’t worry, sweetie, none of it concerns you. I’ll save your stories for another day.”  
  
Meg brings him his medicine, and River smiles at her, a quick show of teeth.  
  
Meg smiles back.  
  
.  
  
When the Doctor comes back, it’s with the Winchesters and a healer from four galaxies over, who specializes in the soul. The Doctor smiles at him, and the woman he’s brought with him lifts her hands to his chest, prodding at the skin directly above his heart before she slides those gentle hands upwards, up and over his collarbone, the tendons of his neck, his jawline, his brow—before they finally settle at his temples.  
  
She is quiet, and that silence spreads to the rest of the room, eerie, until the only one who is still speaking at all is Lucifer, standing over her shoulder like he can touch her—like he isn’t just as much a prisoner of Castiel’s mind as Castiel himself. Blue lips curl, and when she smiles at him, her eyes go bright with color. The glow of Castiel’s grace is sudden enough that everyone but her closes their eyes, flinching away from the sudden light, but Castiel—Castiel watches as her lips form words that even he doesn’t know, as her hands leach the sickness away from his grace until it isn’t quite as heavy—until Lucifer is a flickering shade in the corner.  
  
The woman’s smile brightens, and the light that is weaving around her fingers pulses once. Lucifer vanishes with a howl.  
  
Suddenly, the world is quiet. His brother no longer by his side, no longer able to stick his fingers inside Castiel and pull on his strings. The world is quiet, and for the first time in a long time, Castiel is not afraid. He looks around at his friends; at the Doctor and the grin that’s playing along the edges of his lips, at River, curled up at his side and stroking a hand along his shoulder blade, at Sam, who looks guilty and pleased and so very much the beautiful soul that has flourished without the madness curdling his mind. Then he looks at Dean, standing at the Doctor’s side and frowning down at his feet as if he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He wonders if Dean still blames him for all of this, if Dean will forever hold it all against him. Crowley, Sam, the creatures that Castiel brought into this world—he wonders if Dean would ever want to forgive him.  
  
He starts to sit up, struggling with his own limbs, because the urge to go to Dean is the strongest it has ever been, but before he gets far, River’s hand stops him. And then Dean looks up.  
  
They say that you can read a lot in a person’s eyes. That they’re the windows to the soul. Castiel has never believed that more than this moment here, when he doesn’t need to get into Dean’s head to know that he is thanking God, even if he’s doing it with far too many expletives. Dean looks at him, and when he smiles, it’s truer than any he’s bestowed upon Castiel thus far.  
  
Silently, he reaches around the woman, and hands Castiel a change of clothes. A familiar trench coat lies on top of the pile, carefully dry cleaned until the blood has been all but removed from the fabric, a few rips and tears the only thing telling its history. But more than that is it smells like Dean—hotel room laundry detergent, gunmetal, and old cars.  
  
He holds the pile close to his chest, and helplessly smiles back.  
  
.  
  
“I think I’ve found something, Doctor.”  
  
Castiel’s voice is quiet, vaguely static over the telephone line, but he sounds happy. “A weapon?” the Doctor asks, knuckles gone white around the screwdriver. River watches him carefully, her gown lovely—shades of the African sunset vivid in the gloom of the sewers. Minutes before, she had smiled at him and laughed, “Really sweetie? Our dates always seem to end like this.” Tramping around sewers, deserts, prisons—everything but what the Doctor has promised her.  
  
Castiel chuckles on the other end and the Doctor can tell he’s smiling. The small one that he’d learned from Dean, but a smile nonetheless. “Perhaps the greatest of them all, but I can’t be sure. I think—Doctor, I think I’ve found _Him._ I think that He’s here. Dean wouldn’t approve, but this close—I can’t just forget. I can’t forget. I won’t.”  
  
Deep breath. The Doctor breathes in the acrid, stale air, and River wraps her hand around his. “Doctor?” she asks, her breath fogging the air before him. He breathes out, and yes, her perfume smells much better than the poisoned, fetid water just beneath them.  
  
“Castiel, you’ve found who? Who, Castiel?”  
  
Deep breath in—  
  
_“God.”_  
  
The line goes dead.  
  
—and out.  
  
.  
  
The Doctor didn't mean to lose him.  
  
Not really.  
  
.  
  
It isn't the first time, and it certainly won't be the last.  
  
.  
  
"Where the hell is he? Where is Castiel?"  
  
.  
  
The thing is, the story doesn't start with lizard men. It starts with a missing angel, and a message.  
  
It does not start with Castiel finding his way back home.  
  
It begins with static.  
  
Roll opening credits.  
  
The story is about to start.  
  
.  
  
"—I'm not sure my voice will even reach you like this, but Doctor—Dean—"  
  
The message runs through with static, the signal shot, audio fading with Castiel's voice cracking on Dean's name, and the Doctor shouts.  
  
Moments later, the signal's back; a close up of Castiel's face, eyes wild with blood collecting at the corners of his mouth and dripping down his brow.  
  
"—ind me. I can't—"  
  
Beside him, Rory is silent, face white as a sheet. There's a strange music coming through, faint, but just barely discernable through the static. Filmy and slow, like an old record player that keeps skipping—skip, skip, skip—and something that sounds like water.  
  
"—on't understand. Find me in rapture. I don't think I can—"  
  
The video skips again, and a shadow looms behind him, something clutched in its hands—raised over Castiel's bloody head.  
  
"—here isn't—"  
  
The figure brings its fist down, and Castiel's eyes roll.  
  
The video cuts out.  
  
Amy clutches her husband's hand, knuckles gone white.  
  
"I think I need to pay the Winchesters a visit."  
  
.  
  
"Where the hell is he? Where is Castiel?"  
  
Dean's face is creased in anger, hands tight on the beer bottle that never made it to his lips. The house they're in is small and cramped, smelling of old books and petrol. The TARDIS sits in a junkyard, the vibrant blue violently out of place surrounded by faded, sun-bleached cars.  
  
"Where is he? _Doctor, where the hell is Castiel!_ "  
  
"I don't know."  
  
.  
  
"We'll find him, Dean," Sam whispers. The two of them are tucked close to the door, as far away from the console as they can get, sequestered there like two little lost children. They don’t like her very much. Sam’s warming to her slowly, that curiosity that makes him so fundamentally _Sam Winchester_ starting to itch at the back of his mind, an old childish desire to run his hands all over everything in sight, coating the TARDIS’s interior with his fingerprints. Dean though, Dean hates it the same way he hates planes and poltergeists and young mothers in pain.  
  
He’s been on the TARDIS before, of course, just the once, and he’d hated it then too—clutching Castiel’s coat tight enough to leave marks in the fabric, and surging out the door the second it opened. It appears that Dean Winchester hates any type of flight, not limited to airplanes.  
  
The Doctor hopes he’ll grow out of it.  
  
.  
  
Then there’s the other puzzle: Castiel’s message, and the meaning behind _rapture_. River seems to think he’s referring to _the_ Rapture, à la the Book of Revelations, but Dean quickly shoots that down with a pained smile. “First off, _which_ freaking apocalypse? Last year’s? The year before that? And there’s no way in hell that some poor schmuck isn’t dealing with an apocalypse on planet so-and-so off in la-la land. Secondly, Cas has had enough Raptures to last him a lifetime. No more Raptures for that angel.”  
  
Sam rolls his eyes, hiding his face in the thick tome that he managed to un-earth from one of the TARDIS’ libraries. Next to him, River settles her hip against the console, baring her teeth in a feral smile. “Then what exactly do you think it means, _darling_?”  
  
The Doctor is starting to think that River does not like Dean Winchester. He’s never heard her use that endearment so viciously before. Dean scoffs. “Maybe he’s just off getting laid somewhere. Some nice kinky angel sex. Find me in rapture, oh yeah, baby.”  
  
She glares at him when he winks, and when the others just stare at him, he throws up his hands. “Like I freaking know! I’m not exactly the Cas expert here. Ask him!” He points accusingly, and the Doctor spins around. Nope, no one behind him.  
  
“I think, Dean Winchester, that you’ll find you _are_ the Castiel expert, here,” River sighs, and cocks her gun.  
  
.  
  
They check Bethlehem, and then they stop by Nazareth, and the Doctor does not allow Dean anywhere near the rabbi, Joshua. They check countless planets that are breaking apart beneath their feet, and in a week they experience more apocalypses than they can keep track of. The Doctor whispers to the TARDIS quietly, pleading with her, because she’s always known where to take him, even when he didn’t. Nothing works, and the TARDIS hums back at him sadly.  
  
.  
  
It’s Amy who ends up finding it in the middle of a slow, quiet day when they’ve all taken a page out of the Winchesters’ book and surrounded themselves with research, heaps and heaps of history books, religious books, even fictional books. They’re reading quietly, Rory propped up against his wife’s side on a newly installed window seat, staring out into the vast reaches of space. River’s off on some mad lead, thinking some associate of hers might be able to help. Dean and Sam are sitting back to back in the middle of it, Dean taking sporadic swigs from a flask propped against his ankle.  
  
When Amy gasps, everyone looks up. “I’ve got it!” she shrieks.  
  
Oddly enough, she does.  
  
.  
  
Rapture, a city lost amongst the pages of history. A paradise gone wrong, the books say, greed and malice and monstrosity its greatest treasures. The few books that they find about it speak of creatures no longer quite human, Splicers, human beings whose basic genetic code has been rewritten to the point of mutation.  
  
There are no pictures. 63° 2' N, 29° 55' W, a necropolis beneath the North Atlantic Ocean created in the nineteen forties, a dream city, an impossible city—a twentieth century Atlantis gone to ruins. Andrew Ryan. "’A man has choices,’” Rory reads. “‘I chose the impossible.’”  
  
This is Castiel’s prison, and they may not have a date, but they have a location; from there it’s only a matter of time. Dean slams the book shut and grits his teeth. The console room is quiet, desolate.  
  
They all know what they’re walking into, and the Doctor makes the decision to take the Ponds back home before Amy can kick up a fuss, backed by Sam and Dean, both of whom quietly assure the couple that they don’t want to risk any more people than they have to. “Hush now, Ponds,” the Doctor whispers, walking them to their door.  
  
When he gets back, Sam is arguing with his brother quietly. They both look up when he closes the doors behind him, the TARDIS gone still and silent. “Well now,” he says, with a bravado he doesn’t quite feel. “What are we waiting for?”  
  
.  
  
It’s worse than he thought it would be.  
  
.  
  
Their first stop is 1946, when the Olympian is just starting to set the building blocks upon the ocean floor. They watch as the Sinker, Rapture’s foundation, is slowly lowered into the water. The ocean churns around the behemoth steam-liner, as if even the sea itself wants no part in this expedition.  
  
Andrew Ryan is young still, dark curls dripping with sweat from the midday sun. There is an unfamiliar man standing next to him, and though the Doctor squints, he can’t quite make him out.  
  
They leave, and as he ushers the boys back onto the TARDIS, the strange man seems to wave.  
  
.  
  
They meet Jasmine Jolene in 1956, crying quietly as she dances. When Dean grins at her, wiping her tears, he asks why she’s crying. She gives a little sob, and leaves the stage.  
  
They search 1956, and though they find dozens of things that are already going wrong with the city, they do not find Castiel.  
  
.  
  
The fighting reaches a climax in 1958, and Julie Langford helps them escape the chaos of the New Year’s party, showing them back through the labyrinth until they catch a glimpse of the TARDIS near Neptune’s Bounty. Sam turns back for her at the last minute, promising a world where her genius would not be stifled by the polluted city. She smiles at him, and when she strokes a hand down his cheek, her fingers leave traces of soil.  
  
“Dear boy,” she tells him, “I could never leave my trees with them. I have something I’m working on, something that will change this world as we know it. _Rosa gallica officinalis._ One day, everyone will know its name.Worry not, Sam. I have a feeling we’ll see each other again soon.”  
  
.  
  
They jump back, back to ‘49, when Rapture is still thriving under Ryan’s watchful gaze. Ryan is a proud man, and when they meet him, he welcomes them with open arms. He allows the Doctor to use the labs, access to wherever they wish. He is an intelligent man, not yet driven to madness by his failures. A man with a head full of scintillating futures, a utopia for the world’s best and brightest.  
  
They trek through Rapture a third time, and meet a girl named Jane who wants to be a star.  
  
They do not find Castiel.  
  
.  
  
"You could be so brilliant," says the Doctor when they first meet, on the docks of the harbor in 1942. Sander is not quite young—old enough to know that those who shine too brightly are best to be avoided. He grins, playful and charismatic, utilizing the last vestiges of boyishness to dimple his smile and round his cheeks, ever so slightly impish.  
  
"My good sir," he purrs, silky-smooth—an entertainers voice. "I _will_ be brilliant. Won't you stick around to see me shine?"  
  
.  
  
1948, and there are rumors of a discovery. Brigid Tenenbaum, sea slugs, and something called ADAM. Little girls turned into tiny little monsters; and guardians to watch over them.  
  
.  
  
By 1967 Rapture has gone quiet, splicers left to roam the streets, no Ryan to oversee them. Too quiet. Too late.  
  
.  
  
It is the year of 1962, and Rapture echoes with the screams of the dying. Bloated corpses litter the floors, and the creatures known as splicers have become truly vicious, choosing to gut you first rather than ask questions. Andrew Ryan is silent, as are Fontaine, Atlas, Langford. Rapture’s best and brightest extinguished, the monsters left to roam free.  
  
This is the year that they find him.  
  
.  
  
1962 is the worst year that they have experienced, the Splicers mad with power, worse than the ghosts that they find trapped in Rapture’s walls. For the first few days, the Doctor refused to hurt them, refused to touch them—trying to reason with them until finally a bullet to the shoulder put that notion out of his head. When they’d discovered the TARDIS missing—well, that was that. The Doctor still isn’t as violent as he should be. The pistol they’d given him is mostly used to take out a leg or two, leaving the splicer shouting after them as they make their way through the mad city.  
  
And now—well, now the splicers have the phonebox, the Doctor has a gimp shoulder, Sam has started acting like a creeper around the weirdo little girls with the glowing eyes and the freaky-ass monster daddies, and Dean has a headache. Of course, there’s also the matter of being stuck in Fort Frolic with the corpse smell permanently ingrained in their nostrils, and ghosts flickering in and out of existence all around them.  
  
So when Cohen approaches them with talk of angels and actual, legitimate help, Dean can’t help but be wary of the guy.  
  
However, the Doctor is exhausted, and apparently even being a nine-hundred-year-old alien doesn’t stop the effects of blood loss. They’ve been running for days—at this point, everyone is a little bit battle-weary.  
  
So they agree to do Cohen a few favors, even though the Doctor claims to be perfectly fine.  
  
They take out some people for him: scorned lovers, former friends, and a few ghosts that have been giving him trouble. Along the way, they find out a few things of their own.  
  
.  
  
The first week isn’t actually that bad. Rapture’s not the prettiest city they’ve ever been to—it’s rank with assholes and greedy fucking monsters and the whole place has bullshit to its rafters, but between the Doctor deciding to hack into every security bot and turret and make them his minions, Sam going on and on about architecture, and Dean finding _good_ fucking liquor everywhere he looks, it isn’t that bad. The bots following along behind them are actually kind of cool, the same way that Dean kind of thinks that the TARDIS is one badass fucking lady, even if she makes him airsick as all hell.  
  
The Doctor grins at him, cooing at one of the latest editions. Dean’s pretty sure that if the thing could nuzzle the Doctor without taking off his head, it would.  
  
They camp out in ransacked shops, keeping a steady diet of pep-bars, potato chips, and weird creme-filled cakes. It’s a lot like home, except instead of hotels there are bloodied, damp floors and there isn’t a bacon cheeseburger or a slice of apple pie in sight.  
  
The second week is... less good. In fact, the second week is a downright disaster. Cohen crows at them over the loudspeakers as they take out whatever individual wronged him this time and the Doctor starts to droop enough that his little bot friends flock around him and go ape-shit whenever someone that isn’t Sam or Dean gets close to him. They’re protective as all hell, which actually makes it worse whenever something gets a lucky strike in and takes one down.  
  
Their food supply starts dwindling, even when they start picking places with storage rooms in the back. Eventually it gets so bad that Sam takes them to the frozen back rooms of Fontaine Fisheries, yanks some fish out of the freezers and uses some wood from a nearby table to roast them up. It’s not the best, but it works.  
  
By their third week, they’re running ragged, and Dean’s developed a loathing so severe for this Cohen guy that he’s started telling the guy in detail exactly what he’s gonna do to him when they find him. The Doctor doesn’t like it much, because he’s the only one who has had a hearts-to-heart with the fucker before the dude went crazy, but at this point, Dean doesn’t even give a shit. He doesn’t trust the fucker one goddamned bit.  
  
.  
  
The diaries pop up all around Rapture, and the Doctor started the habit of listening to them. “It’s only fair that we listen to these poor people. They were sane enough to record them, and these are the last vestiges of who they were. We’re killing them now. We owe them that.”  
  
So they listen to the voices of the dead and dying, and they learn the horrors of Rapture. “The Splicers crave the ADAM more and more. It rewrites the DNA even as it destroys the mind,” Brigid Tenenbaum whispers to them as they make their way through Poseidon Plaza. The skittering of spider splicers in the ceiling follow them as they go, and Sam keeps a gun trained upwards, ever vigilant.  
  
“It’s strange,” the Doctor whispers. “The sea slugs that are crucial to producing ADAM sound like a species a few galaxies over. They’re called _Lumbricus Mens Mentis_. Latin for ‘thought worm.’”  
  
The Doctor grins a bit, first at Sam, then at Dean.  
  
“They’re actually quite lovely little creatures. Always polite, these worms. They’re capable of modifying the genetic makeup in most creatures—fascinating, really. The Chameleon Arch was originally designed to work the same way, though we had to use a perception filter rather than completely altering the biology. Well, alter completely. Heal and alter, but they’re always polite about it.”  
  
Sam looks intrigued, so Dean takes it upon himself to dispatch the splicer that erupts from the ceiling. Unfortunately, the smile fades and the Doctor flinches, going quiet.  
  
.  
  
Cohen laughs when they return various body parts of the people he’d asked them to kill. He laughs and laughs and then purrs, “Just one more thing—one more thing you’ll need in order to get where you’re going.”  
  
.  
  
“It’s a bad idea.” The Doctor is glaring at the pseudo vending machine before them, as if he’d like nothing more than to make it blow up with his brain. It isn’t right, he’d told Sam days ago. Over the years, there have been hundreds of planets that have perfected the art of gene-splicing, and madness like this has never been a side effect. Maybe he’s right, but maybe he isn’t. Dean’s glaring at _him,_ though, brow furrowed and hackles up, standard issue defensive older brother. That’s the same look he’d given Sam in the first grade when Sam had come home with a black eye and refused to tell him who did it. “Listen to the Doc, Sammy, it’s a bad idea. This guy has been jerking us around for weeks and we’re supposed to trust him enough for this? We’ve seen what this stuff does to people, Sam. I can’t let you do this.”  
  
He frowns over at both of them, and the Doctor finally pulls his eyes away from the machine long enough to really look at him. “Look, we don’t—”  
  
Cohen chuckles at them, cutting off what he’d been about to say. “Time’s a-tickin’, little moths.”  
  
Sam draws himself up to his fullest height, and the look he sends his brother is one that he knows Dean is familiar with. The faint pink light the machine gives off casts shadows all over the room. The creepy statues of the little girls don’t really help the atmosphere. “Dean, I have to. Cas is waiting for us, and this—I can do this for him.”  
  
Dean’s face crumples, eyes moist. “—Samm—”  
  
And in for the kill—“He would do it for us, Dean. You know he would.”  
  
He isn’t crying, but if anything, Dean looks even more crushed, and Sam knows that it’s because he know it’s true. Cas would do anything for them. Hell, he has done anything and everything for them. He’s given up his family, he’s fallen, he’s died, he’s forgotten who he is, only to remember again long enough for him to get Lucifer shoved in his head for month. If anyone is worth this, it’s Cas.  
  
The needle slides in, and Sam screams.  
  
.  
  
Fort Frolic is probably the worst playground that Dean has ever been to, and that includes the crappy, rundown, rusted one in Northern Maine that Sam nearly got sepsis from when he was five. It isn’t just the fact that he knows for damn sure by now that this Cohen guy is just fucking around with them, or that the theme park feels like every other goddamn place in the city. It’s not the corpses or the creepy-ass music or the crazy-ass inhabitants. If anything, it’s because for the first time since arriving in this city, something feels lived in. The lights glow neon above their heads—flickering in a way that has him grabbing for the salt rounds—but still lit up. The tile beneath their feet is cleaner than any other place they’ve been, blood appears only occasionally, and corpses are rare unless they put them there themselves.  
  
The main atrium is flawless, and though some of the shops they’ve peered into seem to be in various stages of decay, it’s obvious that someone cares for the place on a regular basis. Whether that’s Cohen himself or the dozens of other hacks he’s probably convinced to work for him has yet to be seen.  
  
Sam shivers and leans away from the entrance of Eve’s Garden, remembering what they’d found there just minutes ago. Jasmine isn’t quite so pretty now, just a dried out corpse on bloody sheets, a diary tucked just underneath her deathbed. They listen in horror as it tells them about her pregnancy, and from there, there’s only so many ways this could have gone. Dean has a hard time comparing a Ryan who would beat a woman to death over a pregnancy to the bright-eyed young man who’d discussed genetics and chemistry so enthusiastically with the Doctor not even a decade ago—but then again, it feels like Rapture has driven everyone mad.  
  
“You doin’ all right over there, Sammy?”  
  
Sam flashes him the bitch face between heaving breaths, and Dean has to fight the urge to close the distance between them and pat him down until he’s sure there’s not a stray bullet lodged into his lungs. The Doctor is swinging his legs, perched on a crumbled pillar, and the look he shoots Dean is as reassuring as it is creepy. Even after all this, Dean’s not entirely sure that he trusts the Doctor. Hell, he knows that he doesn’t like him yet, but he’s Castiel’s friend—time-traveling genius alien and all that, so Dean’s gonna have to rely on him for a bit. If the Doctor thinks that whatever creepy bullshit that fucked these guys up in the first place hasn’t damaged Sam much, then Dean will believe him. For now. Even if he gets the urge to punch him every damn time that sparks fly from his little brother’s fingertips.  
  
“Fine, Dean. Never better.” He spits out a mouthful of blood, and yeah, okay, that’s not all right. He steps over the corpse of Cohen’s ex-boyfriend and prods at Sam’s chest, frowning as if he can really tell if there’s internal damage by way of sound.  
  
“Did it get you anywhere?” he hisses, poking at the dirty flannel above Sam’s collarbone. The splicers they’d encountered in the place really weren’t that bad, but it’s always possible that it might have gotten Sam while he wasn’t looking, and for a human, one of those hooks to an unprotected patch of skin is potentially fatal. “Doctor, get your ass down her—”  
  
“Dean, I’m fine. Just—the ADAM hurts more than I thought it would. I can still feel the electricity in my _teeth._ Biting my tongue is really not the worst that could happen to me right now, okay?” Yep, bitch face, right there.  
  
The Doctor finally hops down from his wall and grins at them. “All right, Sam?” he asks, lip twitching.  
  
Sam smiles at him, dimples and all, and claps a big hand onto the Doctor's shoulder, laughing when the Doctor kind of sways under the weight, always graceful. "Yeah, Doctor, I'm okay," he says. Ugh, nerds. Dean should have known better than to introduce his big geek brother to Cas's biggest-geek-in-the-universe BFF.  
  
"Okay, Bert and Ernie, stop flirting and let's get a move on. We've gotta figure out where the hell Cas is in this mess."  
  
.  
  
Just down the corridor to the left of the entrance of Poseidon Plaza, there’s a door to a place called Cohen’s Collection of Fine Arts. When Sam first points it out, the Winchesters decide to shrug it off and proceed into the Plaza, thinking that the big door with the ice surrounding it has something better behind it. But now that Eve’s Garden is behind them, the Doctor considers the door. At first glance, it seems like any of the other doors in the place. It isn’t terrible fancy, but the Doctor hasn’t trusted Cohen since the moment the man had first approached them and asked them to be his assassins. So he stops in front of the door on the way back to the Lower Atrium, even as the boys continue down the hallway, shouting for him to keep up.  
  
He steps closer to the door, screwdriver pressed to the edges even as the door slides open, revealing crumbling walls and ashen floor. “What are you?” he whispers. “What’s the bad man hiding here?”  
  
“Doctor, what’s taking you?” Dean shouts from ahead.  
  
The Doctor glances away from the door to find Sam cocking his head at him, curious, and Dean waving his gun around impatiently. “We should check here,” he hollers back, moving into the room before they can respond, laughing when Dean curses from behind him.  
  
His first impression of Cohen’s Collection is ash and crumbled plaster and the smell of blood. “What the fuck, Doctor,” Dean whispers through gritted teeth when he catches up, while the Doctor inspects the pack of cigarettes laid out on the counter, a thick coating of dust across the top of the box. Sam comes up behind them and glances around at the peeling walls. He shivers.  
  
There’s noise coming from further down the hallway, the familiar shrieking of maddened human beings. “You can’t hide forever, starshine,” one of them yells, and the clack-clack-clack of heels on linoleum echo behind them. Dean frowns at the door and moves into the room proper, mouth opening like he’s about to berate one of them for leaving a trail. Only he flinches when he reaches the opening, going completely stock still in the doorway. His eyes are roaming over the room, and the Doctor, curious, forgets about the splicers momentarily and creeps up behind him, screwdriver held at the ready.  
  
There’s blood coating the floors and light seeping through windows in a way that make him think of the vashta nerada, and a figure at the far side of the room, dangling in the air just before the stairs—bloodied trench coat and dark hair, familiar save for the dead yellow glow in the eyes, the corpse-gray skin, and the mess of viscera that is the abdomen.  
  
The figure stares at them, and there’s a gasp from behind him, and Sam sounds like he’s in pain. The pain hits the Doctor’s hearts at the same time, like a firecracker going off in his chest, and _oh no, please, please, not this one—_  
  
He takes a deep breath and beside him, Dean lets out a shuddery breath. Whispers, like he doesn’t want a response—“Cas?”

 

 

.  
  
Spring of 1956, and Castiel wakes in a cage. The first thing they do is break his wings.  
  
.  
  
December, 1956. Castiel has been a prisoner for months now, currently stuffed into a cell in Persephone, and all of his cellmates are screaming. Most from withdrawal, others just for the sake of it. Some are in pain, and there are a few who are afraid. A twelve-year-old girl is in the cell next to him. She spends her days sobbing for her mother and her nights howling for ADAM.  
  
It is 1956, and Castiel surfaces from the cocktail of drugs that Fontaine has pumped into him to the sound of Dean’s voice.  
  
He isn’t in a cell, the Doctor and Sam are both beside him as they prowl between the bars, inspecting the prisoners here and there. Castiel doesn’t know how they managed to get in, but he supposes that with the Doctor, psychic paper could get you pretty far in this place.  
  
The man they’re with is saying something, gesturing the other way, and they start to turn—back the way they came. Castiel tries to shout for them, his lips forming Dean’s name, but no sound comes out. He has not been given water in over a month, because Fontaine wishes to know whether angels can go without nourishment for an extended period of time and still survive. He has been beaten, burnt, and split open by these people, and at the moment they literally have his tongue on ice in another room.  
  
He rattles the bars to his cell, but the sound mixes with the hundreds of other prisoners doing the exact same thing.  
  
Dean fades from view, and next to him, the girl giggles.  
  
.  
  
1957\. Cohen lights him on fire, again and again, because he likes to watch Castiel’s skin turn pink again—the dead cells sloughing off of him until he is just exposed tissues and muscle, gleaming red until the skin grows back.  
  
“It’s poetic, Castiel, dear. Can’t you see how beautiful you are? Perfect.”  
  
Cohen laughs and snaps his fingers before the skin has time to return. “Now let’s see how that body of yours burns without its skin.”  
  
.  
  
It is the year 1958, and Castiel spends the year cursing Dean for making an angel feel.  
  
.  
  
The year is 1959, and Castiel has been stuck in Rapture for three years, seven months, and three weeks. He is not sure of the day, nor the minute, and certainly not the second. But he knows enough to know that today is a Steinman day, if just from the lights passing outside the bathysphere. He has three guards today, two with hooks and another with the glowing red fingertips he’s learned to fear since his exposure to Sander Cohen. Houdini splicers are just as mad as the rest, but he’s been given many reasons to fear their fire.  
  
Steinman greets him with a scalpel and a grin, and Castiel’s guards barely have him on the table before the scalpels are in him, twisting deep and puncturing his left lung on the first try. They’ve had enough years together that Steinman knows his body better than a lover would—which patch of skin hides the most responsive organs.  
  
“Today we have a surprise for you, my dear angel. Tell me, Aphrodite, what do you think?”  
  
He brandishes a sea slug, dripping black, and Castiel’s eyes widen, because he finally sees the truth behind ADAM, the real reason that Rapture’s citizens crave it so. Steinman opens him up; a slice here, a breaking of ribs there, and the slug vanishes inside his chest, black ooze mixing with Jimmy Novak’s blood.  
  
Steinman doesn’t even have the time to close him up before he starts screaming.  
  
.  
  
It is 1960, and Steinman sits across the room from Castiel with Andrew Ryan, observing. Ryan frowns at him, watching as he writhes in his bonds, heavy chains wrapped round and round his wrists, and he’s too weak to do a thing about it. The creature sits, quiet for now, soaking up the warmth of his beating heart.  
  
“It’s supposed to be implanted in the stomach lining, you know,” Steinman says, twisting a scalpel around in the air. “None of the adult subjects have lived—not one. A decade, and you’re the first.”  
  
He smiles up at Castiel, mad with power.  
  
“We didn’t think you’d last this long, of course, but I suppose it has something to do with your... celestial heritage. So we figured—why not go a step further? Why not see if you can survive when the creature has free movement?”  
  
“Surprise, surprise. You did. It eats at your organs until they’re shredded pulpy things, but you always heal.”  
  
Ryan leans close, and smiles coldly, speaking to Castiel for the first time in four years. “Why is that?”  
  
.  
  
He thinks that it might be 1961 by now, but the weeks feel like millennia. With the creature in his chest, he cannot heal, and with his hands bound, he cannot remove the creature.  
  
It has been far too long since someone has come by to see him, months since he’s been removed from his cell to be someone’s plaything. Months and his wings are just starting to heal, though the worm pumps toxins through his body, keeping his wings weak and his Grace weaker still.  
  
He is bound to this cell, and he wonders if in fifty years, he will still be here when his younger self first drags Dean from hell.  
  
“Ah, so this is where they kept you. Pretty little pigeon, all locked away. Lucky you, little ol’ Jackie spared me. Killed ‘em all, he did, except yours truly.”  
  
Sander Cohen smiles at him and curtsies. Castiel smells fire.  
  
“So, let’s spring you from this trap, little birdie, and you can come play with good ol’ Sander for a while.”  
  
.  
  
Castiel does not know what year it is. He can feel nothing but the thing in his chest, squirming. The thing that’s made his skin go gray as a corpse and his eyes yellow like rotten lemons.  
  
He does not know what year it is, but Cohen is talking to someone outside of his prison. Cohen’s voice over the loudspeakers, theatrical and purring with satisfaction.  
  
“You say you’re looking for an angel, little moths? We have angels all over Rapture, simply ask the little monsters who wanders its halls.” Cohen, playing with his food, but there’s something in his voice that makes Castiel quake. That voice he had the first time he’d gotten Castiel all to himself, pleased and arrogant and secretive to a fault.  
  
“We’re not looking for just any angel.”  
  
Dean. _Dean._ Dean’s voice, through his prison doors. The creature inside him twists, gnawing through veins and organs, violently protesting against the vessel it’s stuck inside. Castiel knows how it feels, and his fingers itch to rip it out of his chest. He refrains, though. The punishments for doing so often turn much worse than just keeping it within him.  
  
“I may know a thing or two about a certain angel, my curious little friends. So come into my parlor, and perhaps I can help.”  
  
.  
  
It has been weeks since he's heard Dean's voice, and Cohen is his only visitor.  
  
"Your friends are awfully fun to play with, little angel. Such good little worker ants they are." He jerks on razor wire, and Castiel's left hand rises, puppet-like. The wire cuts into his flesh, and his arm goes wet with fresh blood. "It's like cleaning house."  
  
"You do have good taste, though," he purrs, nipping playfully at the side of Castiel's neck. "Tell me, which of my little worker ants is really _yours?_ In my experience, friends don't look for you _that_ hard."  
  
Castiel grimaces and drools blood down his chin as Cohen hoists him upwards. The strain makes his broken wings ache, the hooks digging in until it's his Grace that's dribbling down his body to pool on the ash covered floor. "Well," Cohen grins up at him. "It's polite to answer when you're spoken to."  
  
The pain makes him dizzy, and though the slug inside of him is poison, he grits his teeth against the pain. Knowing Dean is here has given him hope he has not felt in years, so he takes all the blood, all the phlegm and broken teeth in his mouth and aims everything at Cohen's smug face. "Perhaps," he whispers, voice hoarse and aching, "You just don't have very good friends."  
  
The pain is worth the look on Cohen's face.  
  
.  
  
The doors to his prison hiss open, and Castiel watches as Dean rounds the corner and walks into the room—as his eyes adjust to the murky lighting, taking in the morbid plaster sculptures in the center. The family set down to dinner, one of Cohen's older works—the father with his wrists sliced open, the mother with her arms bound behind her, and the daughter with her hands folded demurely in her lap. Only after passing this over does he start noticing the vibrant slashes of red streaked across the monotone landscape. His eyes follow the blood even as Sam and the Doctor burst into the room behind him, Sam clutching tight to a crowbar with a streak of blood across his cheek, and the Doctor holding his sonic screwdriver in front of him like a weapon. Castiel though, right now, Castiel only has eyes for Dean. Dean, whose eyes are tracking the blood to the pools of light on the ground, and then up, to the glow of Castiel's grace in his split open chest, rib cage snapped and cracked apart, revealing the innermost workings of an angel. The worm is in his stomach now, safely concealed there until Cohen comes to seal him back up. The worst though, he thinks, is when Dean notices that Castiel is suspended by nothing, a pariah dangling in mid-air, a ladder before him.  
  
The only thing keeping Castiel up are his wings, pinned to the twin pillars on either side of him. Crucifixion for an angel, spit like a butterfly, Sander Cohen's next great masterpiece: a study in color.  
  
.  
  
“We’re here to help, Cas,” the Doctor shouts, only his eyes belying just how afraid he really is right now. He knows that Castiel can heal, but even he recognizes the puddles of grace on the ground beneath him, the light from his chest. Behind him, Sam makes a strange sound, and reaches forward. “Cas?”  
  
Dean stares up at him, completely still, and Castiel wonders if after all of this, Dean will turn him away for being foolish enough to think he'd found his Father. Before Castiel can consider this seriously, Dean's face contorts, an intense rage that reminds Castiel of Sam being in danger. “Sam! Help me get him down!” he barks, and immediately moves to the ladder at Castiel's side.  
  
Sam moves to the side of the ladder and steadies Castiel's legs while Dean blindly reaches for the hooks. He can't see Castiel's wings, but Castiel's weak enough that he can't tuck his wings away from the cruel brush of reality. He hasn't been able to for far too long, and when Dean reaches, his hands brush up against feathers—Castiel's wings—free for a human to touch. Dean pauses when he feels them, and glances at him, flinching when his eyes meet Castiel's. Beneath them, Sam is talking to the Doctor calmly.  
  
“Doctor, we need some help in here. Seal the doors, it’ll hold them back for now.”  
  
Dean is still looking at him, gently prying the hooks from his wings one by one. “Cas? Cas? C’mon, answer me, man,” he whispers, voice catching, emotional.  
  
Sam's arms wrap around him more securely as one of his wings are freed, slipping down to slide boneless to Sam's side. Dean starts on the other one, but Sam is staring up at the mess of his chest in horror, fingers digging into Castiel's thigh. “Dean, he doesn’t look good. How are we supposed to close him back up? He can’t—”  
  
"It's gonna be okay, Cas," Dean is saying, whispering against his filthy neck, as his slippery hands work on that last hook. It releases, and Castiel slumps forward, nose pressed into the side of Dean's neck. He breathes deep, and though Dean smells filthy, he smells _human._ It's the first time in years that Castiel has smelled something other than decay and the sickness of addiction, and Castiel is so thankful that if he had any fluid to spare in his body, he would weep. Sam's arms tighten around him, pulling him down, away from Dean, and Castiel panics, eyes going wide—reaching.  
  
And then he is in Sam's arms, gentle Sam who is so very careful not to touch any of his exposed organs. The Doctor is by his side, frowning down at him, and Castiel would laugh, because the bow tie is gone, shirt ripped, and he just doesn't look like the Doctor like that—he looks like a Winchester.  
  
“Boys, I’m going to need you to move.”  
  
It takes him too long to focus on the Doctor’s face, too long to wrap a hand around Dean’s wrist, and speaking... He coughs, and the sound echoes wetly as his lungs seize against the Doctor’s palms.  
  
“Why are his eyes glowing?” Dean asks, brushing his thumb just beneath Castiel's eyes.  
  
He takes hold of the Doctor’s hand, and drags it down to rest over his stomach, presses down until the Doctor feels the creature moving. He goes limp. Hopefully the Doctor will know what to do.  
  
.  
  
Sam hasn’t known the Doctor for long, but he’s never seen him angry. Not like this, screaming at the ceiling as he takes readings of Cas’s organs with his screwdriver. “ _Humans_ ,” he hisses. “You see something beautiful and new and you have to take it apart to prove it isn’t a threat. You lot make me sick.”  
  
He goes quiet and turns to Sam, fury and sorrow burning in his eyes. “Sam, I am so sorry, but he was right. You did need it.”  
  
When he explains, Sam feels sick. Castiel is gray before them, and his eyes are glowing gold, and there’s a creature inside him that does who knows what to a human body. “I’m going to need your help, Sam,” he says. “You’re going to need to stay calm.”  
  
“To do what?” Dean hisses.  
  
“This,” the Doctor whispers, taking hold of the scalpel next to him—and slicing into Castiel’s stomach. Stomach acid isn’t exactly pleasant, and the Doctor’s hands redden the moment it touches him. The Doctor barely flinches, sliding his hand further inside, fisting it around something and yanking it out. It’s smaller than he thought, and Sam knows what it is the minute he sees it. The Doctor whispers something to it, and when he sets it aside, it doesn’t move. He grimaces, pinching the wound together.  
  
“Now, Sam.”  
  
Incinerate isn’t the easiest plasmid to control. Fire wants to spread, so Sam has to tell it not to—that it has to concentrate on a certain spot. Cauterize, don’t blaze. Heal, don’t consume.  
  
Castiel gasps, and his eyes flutter shut.  
  
“Cas? Cas? What did you do to him? What is that thing?”  
  
Sam closes his eyes, and slides an EVE hypo into the crook of his arm. When he opens them, electricity crackles around his fist, and Dean has the Doctor by the shirt collar. “Dean. He helped him. It’s the slug. The ones that make the little girls monsters.”  
  
Dean’s grip loosens, and the Doctor slips free. He turns back to Cas, his spine stiff. The floor is tacky with blood, and Castiel’s chest is still split down the middle. Sam watches in fascination as Castiel’s heart pumps away, his lungs heaving.  
  
“I’m going to need your help again, boys. He’s Castiel. Little old angel fell off the wall, and we need to put him back together again.”  
  
.  
  
When Castiel opens his eyes, the first thing he notices is the creature’s absence. So long had it sat in his chest that he’d forgotten what it felt like to really _feel_ the world around him. Already the gray of his skin is bleeding pink again, ever so slowly. He wonders what’s become of his eyes—if they too are blue and human once more, or if the gold still remains.  
  
He rolls over, coughing, happy to discover that his chest is sealed up tight again. No creature, hardly any wounds, and his Grace is brighter than its been in years.  
  
.  
  
“You look like hell, man.” Dean growls, watching Castiel try to get his bearings. They’re camped out in a place called Sinclair’s Spirits, mostly because after their little game of operation, Dean had needed a stiff drink to forget the sight of Castiel’s blood covering all three of them. And the floor. And the walls. The sound his wings had made as they’d come off the nails is still echoing in his head, because even if Dean can’t see them, they have no way of knowing just how long he’d been hanging there. If wings were anything like any human appendage, it must have been agony. Getting away hadn’t exactly been a walk in the park either, with Sam and the Doctor trying to carry Cas out of that horrible place while Dean took out the splicers Cohen had laughingly set after them.  
  
He could go through lifetimes of torture, and he still wouldn’t want to repeat the experience.  
  
Castiel blinks at him vacantly, and there’s a moment there when he thinks this is going to be like when he took Sam’s madness into himself, tortured night after night by a devil that wasn’t even there.  
  
“I... suppose I do,” Cas whispers, blinking slowly around the place; taking in the bottles of spirits that litter the floor and shelves. They’re behind the cash register, which is the only area that isn’t completely soaked with the water coming in steady streams from the ceiling. There’s a record looping from somewhere— _how much is that doggy in the window_ , it croons, and Dean tries not to be completely freaked out by it. By this whole place, really, because he’d come here thinking of the worst job they’d ever worked, and so far it’s completely exceeded his expectations. Scarier than any goddamn poltergeist they’ve come up against, any spirit hellbent on revenge. Worse than werewolves and vampires and evil-ass clowns, because these are _people_ , driven into madness, a whole fucking city of them, like the worst zombie apocalypse the world could deliver.  
  
The Doctor and Sam are checking the flooded basement, so for now it’s up to him to check the bandages they’d wrapped around Cas to make sure he stays together long enough to heal.  
  
“It’s demon blood,” Cas says, grimacing at the glass of whiskey Dean’s got in his hand.  
  
“Come again?”  
  
Cas looks right at him, blue eyes somehow vibrant in the scant light. The water echoes loudly in the small room, and Dean is cold and wet, and cannot fucking deal with demons right now. “The creatures—ADAM, it’s all demon blood. I don’t quite know how, but the creatures are saturated with it. The ADAM, the powers. They broke my wings, cut them to pieces and watched them grow back wrong. If I tried to leave, they would give me drugs. But nothing, nothing was as truly painful as that creature was.”  
  
“So that slug, you’re telling me that they put demon blood into some _thing_ that they found on the goddamn ocean floor, and they stuck them in children—they did that?” He sets his drink down, because the glass is cracking under his fingers.  
  
“To produce more ADAM, yes.”  
  
“Those sick motherfucking bastards.”  
  
.  
  
The worm is an alien, fed with demon blood and incubated in the stomachs of children.  
  
ADAM is nothing but a warped version of what Azazel did to Sammy and his other “children,” but with an entire city of ravenous, rabid human beings.  
  
The Doctor closes his eyes and Sam carefully doesn’t look at any of them, sparks darting between his fingers.  
  
Dean wants to burn the place down.  
  
.  
  
“My my, pretty little moths, still all aflutter. Have you realized, yet?”  
  
“Realized what, you dickwad?”  
  
“He wants to meet you so very badly. But... we’ll let you puzzle it out a little bit longer, shall we?”  
  
.  
  
They decide to try their luck in Hephaestus, because it’s Andrew Ryan’s old hideout, and surely, if the TARDIS is anywhere, it’s there. They hobble along, all of them clustered protectively around Castiel as his skin slowly goes pink again, as the yellow glow fades from his eyes, as the scars on his chest ease back into unblemished skin. The splicers still make a beeline for him when they see him, like they can smell the ADAM on him, but Castiel assures them all that he feels no side effects—that for the first time in years, his Grace feels untarnished.  
  
Predictably, things go wrong when they reach the bathysphere—inhuman cackles and sudden dust in the air. Sam turns, the Doctor flinching ahead of him, and has one last look at Dean and Castiel’s horrified faces before the bathysphere door snaps shut, and the rocks obscure his view.  
  
“Dean!”  
  
He pounds on the door until the pod starts moving, propelling away from the wreckage that his brother might be buried in. The Doctor lays a hand on his shoulder and Sam slumps to the floor.  
  
.  
  
The cave-in isn’t expected and it certainly isn’t accidental. Dean guts one of the splicers that tries to charge Cas, knife full-on buried to the hilt, enough that he can feel its blood slick his clenched fist. There’s too much dust in the air, and he can’t tell if the bathysphere got out safely, or if Sam and the Doctor are at the bottom of the ocean right now, their brains bursting out their ears from the pressure.  
  
“Sam! Sam! Goddammit!”  
  
He shouts and shouts, but the only good that does is to bring more splicers their way, giving him something to take his anger out on.  
  
They have a circle of corpses around them before he gives up, Cas’s hand on his shoulder. The hand turns him around, and it’s still weird to see Cas with glowing yellow eyes and gray skin—a punch to the gut that has his instincts screaming at him to gut the demon before it gets to you first.  
  
“Dean,” Cas says, hand gentle as it caresses his shoulder. “This isn’t the way. If either of them had passed, I would know. We’ll find them.”  
  
He slams a fist into the rock blocking their path and scowls down at the red on his shaking hands.  
  
“I know we will,” he says, because he’s always found Sam, and whenever he couldn’t, Cas could.  
  
.  
  
To start with, it’s Cas’s idea. The problem could probably be fixed some other way, but this is the surest way. The safest way.  
  
“And besides,” Cas adds—“It isn’t as if I’m not used to the sensation.”  
  
.  
  
They go for the first one they find, because it makes him feel skeezy to actively hunt them down, and taking down one monster daddy is hard enough as it is.  
  
It’s tough, but they take it down.  
  
.  
  
The little girl cringes away from him, dirty brown hair half out of its ponytail. Her eyes are yellow, glowing, and Castiel wonders just how long she’s been here. Her protector is dead at their feet, and she’s shrieking at them, tears steaming down corpse-gray skin. “This isn’t right, Cas. I’m tellin’ you. This whole thing makes me queasy.”  
  
Dean does appear sick to his stomach, for his face is nearly as white as the girl’s. “Dean, this is the only way, trust me.”  
  
“And you’ll—your body will be safe here? Until we come back to it? You’re sure?”  
  
He grimaces. It is a possibility that Jimmy’s body may be compromised while they’re gone, but it is a risk that they will have to take. There is no way around this. Jimmy is no longer with him, a fact that he is thankful for. After everything this body has been through, he would not wish that on the man. The place is frigid, and the temperature will keep the body from decomposing while they are gone.  
  
“Everything will be fine, Dean. Pass her to me, please.”  
  
Dean surrenders and passes the wriggling child to him. It is not difficult to take over the child’s mind, despite the lack of Novak blood within her. She may not contain his form for long, but it will not be a problem for what they need to accomplish.  
  
The girl’s name is Masha Lutz, and she is nearly ten years old. Her mind is so cracked and splintered that Castiel is forced to put her to sleep after the initial onslaught of memories, where the madness catches on the edge of his grace, sticking to it like larva. Masha has a mother and a father somewhere in Rapture, was taken away from her family by Ryan, and thinks that a tree is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen.  
  
It is strange, to be looking up at Dean from this perspective. Stranger still, is the way the little girls see the world around them—warm and safe, their own personal heaven. Castiel glances around the room with her eyes, and no longer wonders why the girls are not afraid.  
  
Rapture lives up to its name in the eyes of a little girl—in the eyes of this particular little girl. The world shines with an ethereal light, all warm hues and soft textures. The gray room that he and Dean had crammed themselves into near Fontaine Fisheries is gone, replaced with marble floors and artfully hung white drapes, creeping ivy and rosebuds. It is beautiful, and it is all he can do to lock it down. If he concentrates, he can see beyond the mental conditioning, to the ice and the blood and the charred corpses a few steps away from Masha’s feet.  
  
Jimmy’s body is half cradled in Dean’s lap, dead-weight. Dean stares at it, face white as chalk.  
  
“You can put it down, Dean,” he says, letting a bright blue butterfly perch on Masha’s fingertip. When he blinks, a fly is in its place, beady eyes staring up at him. He shakes his hand to shoo it away. There is a vent to their right, past one of the Doctor’s turrets. The ice creeps up the wall, and Castiel is thankful that it does not obscure the opening because without Sam they have no way of melting it. He gets to his feet, and tries to shake free the vertigo that is wrapping around his head—the expectation of being much taller. He’s gotten far too used to Jimmy Novak’s body.  
  
“Leave it here, Dean,” he says again, and Dean flinches when Castiel’s voice comes out birdsong high, Masha’s vocal cords and Masha’s voice. There is a faint obstruction there, grit stuck in her lower pharynx and trachea that is all Castiel’s grace, the power of heaven wrapped into one little girl’s larynx. Dean looks at him—at _her_ , and there’s fear there, though of what Castiel is not certain. Dean’s gaze lingers on the glowing eyes, on the dirty feet, and the gray skin, as if he hadn’t seen the same on Jimmy’s body not even three days ago.  
  
Dean swallows, and Castiel watches the line of his throat as he does so, and distantly, he hears Masha wonder sleepily what he would look like with a needle through the hollow of his throat. The madness is creeping around him again, vine-like, lulling Castiel to sleep. There is grit in his eyes, so he rubs it away with the back of his wrist, the wet smearing there like blood. Dean is looking back down at his old body, caressing its cheek like Castiel is still wrapped in its skin, like _Castiel_ can still feel it. He steps delicately across the marble floor and stops before Dean, crouching down so he can meet his eyes.  
  
“Dean,” he whispers, tugging on Dean’s sleeve urgently. “It is nothing, Dean. Merely a vessel. I am here now.” Castiel presses a hand to his chest and listens to Masha’s heart thump away inside him, pitter-patter, the slightly too fast heartbeat of a child. He offers his wrist to Dean, and when the hunter just looks confused, he uses his other hand to wrap Dean’s fingers around the wrist, to slide Dean’s fingertips across the beat of his pulse. “This is me,” he says, his breath coming out in puffs of white vapor. “My Grace runs through her veins now and will continue to do so until my true form either burns her to a husk, or I return to Jimmy Novak’s body. So please, Dean. Put it down.”  
  
Dean's hand tightens around Masha's wrist, pulling him closer until Castiel is crouching just over Dean, gazing down into Jimmy Novak's half lidded dead eyes. “It’ll definitely be safe, right? ‘Cause there aren’t any do-overs with this, Cas. Something goes wrong, we might not have the time to come back for your body.” His voice is gruff. Castiel smiles, and watches his reflection in Dean’s eyes, little girl lips curving slowly upwards.  
  
“Dean, who did you come here with? Trust me, we have all the time in the world.”  
  
.  
  
The bathysphere is just small enough for the Doctor to feel ever so slightly claustrophobic, especially with Sam’s bulk taking up a large majority of it. His legs are stretched across the floor, his head in his hands, and for all that the Doctor, if he’s being honest with himself, prefers Sam over Dean, he doesn’t have a clue what to say.  
  
“We’ll find him, you know,” he says, patting Sam’s shoulder awkwardly.  
  
Sam snorts and looks at him with red rimmed eyes. “Sure, we will,” is all he says.  
  
Again, if he’s honest with himself, he feels a bit offended. “Now Sam Winchester, none of that,” he barks, in his best the-humans-are-being-stupid-again voice. Sam flinches slightly and looks away from his knees warily. “I’ve gotten you impossible boys this far. I’ve taken you to the bottom of the ocean to find your brother’s angel— _my_ best friend—and you are not going to start doubting me now, got it?”  
  
He steps up to the bathysphere’s window, and glares at a whale as it passes overhead. They’re going deeper, that’s for sure. Wherever this Hephaestus is, it must be deep. “Now, I know this isn’t exactly my forte, here.” He takes a deep breath and watches lava gleam bright in the distance. “All this killing, that’s your territory. But I know impossible cities, and I know how they work. I’ve been to enough so-called _utopias_ by now to know that someone is pulling the strings behind all this. We just have to find out who or what that someone is and get my TARDIS back from them.”  
  
He tears his gaze away from the huge structure looming before them, sinister with the lava winding around it like a good old-fashioned castle and moat, and meets Sam’s eyes. “You are strong, Sam Winchester. Stronger than I ever thought possible, and for that, I am glad that I am here with you. You boys have lived through more than what most humans go through in a lifetime, and have come out broken, bleeding, and cracked—but see, the brilliant thing here is that you use each other to make yourselves whole again. You piece your cracks back together, using each other's souls like glue. That is why there is no doubt in my mind that when I say we'll find your brother? We really will."  
  
Sam blinks, and when he smiles, it makes the Doctor remember that little boy in a library, looking for a definition of family.  
  
"Now get up here and see this. Ever seen an underwater volcano before, Sammy-boy?"  
  
.  
  
Predictably, Dean complains incessantly about the Big Daddy suit. The smell, the weight, the size, until Castiel finally turns around and just glares at him from his perch, half inside a vent already. "Would you perhaps prefer to be the one crawling through dark holes, then?” Castiel asks, vexed enough that Masha stirs in the depths of their mind, wondering why something is wrong with her daddy. Castiel soothes the little girl back to sleep with a quick pass over of grace, and chews on his lip, watching Dean for a moment before he crawls inside.  
  
The tunnels are strangely warm, and from Masha’s eyes, they look like wonderland. Candy coats the tunnel, green grass lining its walls, fireflies surrounding him as he makes her way through. It lets him out just past the door they’re trying to get through, and though he can hear splicers, they’re still far enough off not to be a concern. He steps around another mockery of an angel and wishes ardently that it weren’t so tiring to see past the little girl’s conditioning. Castiel has always preferred to see things as they are, and like this, nothing is right.  
  
He has to go up on tiptoe to override the door’s locks, and when it hisses open, Dean has his helmet off and is glowering down at him. It’s still strange for Dean to tower over Castiel, made even stranger by the unfamiliar bulk of the armor. Sometimes he turns around, expecting to see Dean, and startles when he’s greeted by the sight of the suit—the thumping footsteps and the harsh breathing. They learned earlier that Dean doesn’t have the voice of the creature, not with just its armor, and that while speaking, his voice is still his, but it’s an odd experience all the same.  
  
Castiel glowers back at him and is unconcerned when Dean remains unfazed.  
  
“I believe we should wait the night out here,” he says instead, because while he might tell Castiel that it’s all fine, Dean is drooping, eyes dull with exhaustion. Castiel doesn’t need him breaking on him, here of all places. With this body, he’s not sure that he would be able to protect him.  
  
Dean sputters, and gestures to the room over Castiel’s shoulder, flooded with water and littered with artifacts. Most of them are biblical in nature—a stack of bibles half in, half out of the water, a chipped statue of the Virgin Mary next to a waterlogged painting of the Messiah. Castiel does not hold it against those who do not believe in his Father. While he cannot fathom the lack of faith, he who has lived in a time where God’s presence saturated every corner of the world, he does not blame them. His Father has been absent for far too long, long enough that the humans no longer believe. There are those who are devout, truly content in their faith, as Daphne was—and others who use her Father’s name for greed and gluttony, like the preacher that he had killed when all of Purgatory was inside him. It saddens him, because the humans fail to realize his Father’s most powerful gift to them—their free will. They hate each other so passionately, and do not understand that his Father would have never judged a human being for their sex or their beliefs or even their choice of a life partner. Once upon a time, his Father believed in love, and that was the one thing that He was best at.  
  
He does blame Ryan though, just a little bit, for taking away someone’s faith. For creating a world in which Castiel’s Father is denied so thoroughly that those who believe in him have to smuggle objects in.  
  
There are other things in the cave—bottles and bottles of liquor, cigarettes by the carton, even foods. The rocks do not look particularly comfortable, but there is no evidence of splicers in the vicinity, and they have shelter and food. “We can’t stay here, Cas,” Dean hisses. “Look at the place!”  
  
He shrugs and settles against an outcropping of limestone, tucking his legs in beneath him neatly. “There is food and drink, Dean. If you are uncomfortable, there are tarps just over there. Lay them on the ground beneath you. But you need to sleep.”  
  
Dean sighs and begins to shrug out of the suit, sliding it down until it’s slumped awkwardly on the ground and he’s left with filthy jeans and an equally filthy Led Zeppelin t-shirt. Castiel cocks his head and watches as Dean settles down a few feet away from him. Dean doesn’t sit neatly, no knees tucked beneath his chin, no Indian style—Dean sprawls, ass to the ground and legs spread apart across the stone, reclining backwards and propping himself up with his arms. He rolls his head, popping the kinks out of his neck and shoulders, eyes closing in bliss. Like this, he takes up more space than Sam, which is quite the accomplishment.  
  
“If you’re uncomfortable, you can wash your clothes in the water there.”  
  
Dean glances at him through slitted eyes and snorts. “And what, sit around here in my birthday suit til the splicers show up? Thanks but no thanks.”  
  
“I do not understand what a birthday suit consists of,” he says, playing with a strip of ripped fabric on Masha’s dress.  
  
Dean rolls his eyes and sighs, flopping down onto his back. He pillows his head with one arm, and regards him with a raised eyebrow. “Man, I do not get you,” he says. “You watch over the Earth for thousands of years, and you don’t even understand slang?”  
  
Castiel fiddles with a puddle of water next to him, swirling a finger through it to make shapes with the ripples. “There has been much ‘slang’ as you say, over the years, Dean. I cannot keep track of all of it.”  
  
Dean laughs at him, and the sound echoes around the cave. “If you must know, it means that I don’t want to sit around here with my ass in the air when the splicers get here. Gankin’ things naked sucks ass.”  
  
“There are tarps. I would give you Masha’s dress, but I do not think it would fit you.”  
  
He looks like he’s going to make a crack regarding the dress, but then his brows draw together and he looks at Castiel properly. “Who the fuck is Masha?” he asks, and moments later realization dawns in his eyes. He sits back up and frowns at Castiel. “That’s the little girl? Masha? You can speak with her?”  
  
There are stalactites on the ceiling, and one of them appears to be cracking. Castiel shifts to the side a bit, just in case. “Her memories are here for me to see, but her mind is cracked. She has been sleeping since I took possession of her, and I will keep her that way.”  
  
“So she’s there? In your head? She hasn’t gone batshit yet?”  
  
“She is here in her own head, yes, but she is quite mad. Her mental conditioning has driven her nearly out of her mind. It is cracked and broken, and will remain so until well after this creature is out of her. She sleeps, and even sleeping her dreams are of gore and those metal creatures.”  
  
Dean turns his head away from her, and glowers at the ground. “No kid deserves that,” he whispers, closing his eyes.  
  
Castiel leaves him be. He needs the sleep.  
  
.  
  
Sam’s always been fascinated by the world around him. When he was six years old, it was dinosaurs. He’s spend hours in the libraries of whatever town they were in that week just learning about them—about raptors, triceratops, dilophosaurus, procompsognathus, and of course, the _Tyrannosaurus Rex_. When Jurassic Park came out, Dean snuck them out to see a showing of it, grinning over at Sam the entire time, watching him bounce with barely concealed excitement.  
  
When Sam was eight, it was meteorology. When he was ten, it was volcanoes. The week he was supposed to do a research project on them, he spent the entire time nattering about them to Dean—about Olympus Mons, Vesuvius, and the super-volcano beneath Yellowstone. The week after that they were moving again, and it wasn’t until they got there that he realized Dean had looked up hunts in the area, then convinced their dad that it was a necessity. If John was annoyed about driving hundreds of miles for a mere poltergeist, he never saw it. So when they arrive in Hephaestus, the first few minutes are spent with him pressed against the glass in the first connecting tunnel, staring in awe at the magma feet away from them. The Doctor grins over at him, just watching him geek out like a little girl. “Oh yes,” he says. “Volcanoes are cool.”  
  
They spend a few more minutes there, just talking about the various volcanoes the Doctor’s been to, and Sam nearly loses his shit when the Doctor says that he was at Pompeii when it happened.  
  
“It was an accident, of course,” he says, nibbling at his lower lip. “Volcano Day, anyway. Donna was furious.”  
  
There’s a look in his eyes that makes Sam bite his tongue instead of asking who she was, because Winchesters can tell what that look means a mile away. The sound of Splicers echoes down the tunnel, and Sam would roll his eyes if he weren’t too busy fumbling for his gun. There are only two of them, and the Doctor reluctantly pulls out the pistol Dean had given him, flinching first at the recoil and then again when one of the two drops heavily to the ground. Sam puts his down neatly, a bullet between the eyes, and spares a minute to mourn who they once were.  
  
The few minutes’ happiness they’d had while geeking out over the volcano fades as they enter the next room—a bunker with metal beds and ankle-deep water on the ground. There are too many corpses here, and the smell makes them gag as they make their way through it.  
  
The next one is worse, and the Doctor gazes at it in evident horror, taking in the corpses nailed to the walls—the others littering the ground. It appears to be Ryan’s trophy room, because the diaries they pick up near the corpses all seem to be about various people trying to assassinate the man. “I love Mr. Ryan. But I love Rapture. If I have to kill one to save the other, so be it,” Bill McDonagh tells them, and Sam stares at his corpse for a moment, trying to wonder what this man’s life was like—if he was truly a good man, like the diary makes him sound, or if he too had gone mad in the end.  
  
“Come on, Doctor. We shouldn’t be here,” he whispers, tugging at the hole where one of the Doctor’s elbow patches used to be.  
  
The next few rooms seem to be workshops, machinery whirring over their heads and desks littered with mechanical contraptions in various stages of completion. Sam can tell that the Doctor wants to tinker, can see it in the way that his hands twitch towards something that looks to Sam like a dismantled toaster. He resists though, drooping with a sigh before heading into the next room—a behemoth of a room with a huge glowing reactor in the center. “The heart of Rapture,” the Doctor breathes, laying his hand on a large metal pipe at their side.  
  
It’s a majestic site, and they spend long enough staring at it that three more Splicers creep up on them, costing Sam three bullets and the Doctor a long cut along his forearm. His jacket’s ruined by now, but he stubbornly keeps it on anyway, the same way he’d tried to cling to his bow tie until they finally forced him to get rid of it after the fifth splicer that tried to strangle him with it.  
  
“I don’t think it’s here, Doctor,” Sam murmurs on their fourth cycle through the rooms.  
  
“I know she isn’t.” The Doctor sighs, and turns back towards the entrance—back towards their bathysphere.  
  
.  
  
When Dean wakes with a stiff back and a crick in his neck, Cas has his—no, _her_ eyes closed. Fuck, that’s gonna be weird. He’s sleeping not two feet from him, curled up on his side with one hand resting against Dean’s ankle, fingers curled around the denim of his jeans. His hand is so small that his fingers can barely curl half way around, and it’s strange to see the guy like this. The body he’s in could be Dean’s little sister, just a little girl with dirty brown hair and a fucked up dress. He supposes that’s where the name came from. Little Sister. He’s tried to keep his cool about it, but to be honest, it freaks him right the fuck out to see Cas in this little wisp of a girl. Just like how he’d been freaked out for the few minutes that Cas had been in Claire Novak. His Cas, trapped in a little girl with glowing eyes? Not his idea of a fun time.  
  
He sits up, groaning as he does so. Fuck it, but his arm feels like it’s going to fall off. You would think he would have gotten used to sleeping on damp, uncomfortable rocks after these last few weeks, but nope. The sleep hurts him more than the constant running does. Slowly, he lifts Cas’ hand away from his ankle, smiling when he curls in on himself and tucks the hand beneath his body. It’s fucking weird to see the angel sleeping, but fuck, after what he’s gone through, he deserves it. Dean’s not about to wake him up yet.  
  
Quietly, he gets to his feet, cursing as his back protests in the form of a loud series of cracks. Maybe he should take Cas up on his suggestion of washing the clothes—if they hadn’t been attacked in the middle of the night, they’re probably not going to get jumped now, and well, if they do, Dean’s just gonna have to live with fucking the things up with his balls out. He reeks.  
  
The waterline isn’t too far away from where they’d collapsed, so it’s easy to slip out of his clothes and wade in, tasting the salt water in the air as it washes over his skin. He scrubs at his skin with his hands, vigorous enough that the dirt begins to slide off and the surface of it goes red and irritated. Whatever, if it gets all the blood and gunk off, he doesn’t give a shit. He starts in on his hair when most of the dirt seems to have sloughed away from his skin, dunking his head back and scrubbing his fingers through his hair. It’s a little longer than he’s used to, flopping down a bit onto his forehead. If they don’t get out of here soon, he’s gonna start looking like Sam.  
  
By the time he’s done scrubbing his clothes, Cas is stirring, his facial features contorting as he makes the journey back to reality. Dean lays the clothes out a few feet away from him, and tries not to feel too exposed. He knows for damn sure that he isn’t grabbing one of those nasty-ass tarps, so Cas will just have to deal with getting an eyeful when he wakes up. Dean’ll let the clothes dry long enough for him to grab some breakfast, and then they’ll get going, wet clothes or no.  
  
Cas wakes up fully when Dean’s grabbed them both some potato chips, a beat up pep-bar, and a few thermoses of coffee. Dean sits down in front of him as Cas rubs his eyes, trying not to seem to put off by their glow. “I got us some grub,” he says, tossing the food down as Castiel blinks at him slowly. “And hey, I thought you guys didn’t need sleep.”  
  
Castiel keeps blinking at him, his movements awkward—stilted and kind of groggy. “We do not,” he finally says, and Dean shudders. Little girl voice, right. Fucking creepy.  
  
“I made a habit of it when the people here had me captive. It made things... easier.”  
  
Dean’s held back on asking him how long he’s been here for selfish reasons, because for all that they trolled around Rapture before—bouncing back and forth through time like a goddamn bouncy ball, he gets the feeling that Cas has been here for a lot longer than they think. He starts to ask, but then Cas moves, darting a hand out to grab one of the coffees, popping the seal on the canister. Immediately, steam fills the air above it, and Dean breathes the smell in blissfully. Ah, coffee. It’s been far too long.  
  
Cas takes a sip, holding the thermos in both tiny hands as he tips it back. Fascinated, Dean watches the little girl’s throat work as Cas chugs it all down in one go. Afterward, he tosses it off to the side, where it lands in the water with a plop. Dean pops open a bag of chips and offers the Pep Bar to Cas.  
  
“O—kay then,” Dean says, rolling his eyes.  
  
Cas cocks his head and gets hair in his eyes for his trouble. It’s a good thing that most of the girl’s hair is tied back with a big blue ribbon, because otherwise this would be happening constantly. “What?” he asks, taking a small bite of the bar before passing it back to Dean. Dean takes one big bite and gives it back again.  
  
“Nothin’, man. You just drank that a little fast, don’t you think?”  
  
“I was thirsty,” Cas says, frowning. Dean rolls his eyes and goes in search of the bottle of water he’d seen earlier. “Drink this,” he says, handing it over to him. Cas accepts it and takes a small sip before chugging the rest the same way he had downed the coffee.  
  
Dean tosses the chip bag away and climbs to his feet, crossing the room to start gathering his clothes, shaking out the excess water and sliding them back on. They’re damp, which sucks, but it’s not as bad as it could have been. He looks down at Cas, who is sitting demurely with his knees tucked under him, dress neatly tucked over them, nibbling on the rest of the Pep Bar.  
  
“We should probably get going soon. Who knows where the hell the next bathysphere is.”  
  
Cas sighs and tosses the bar into the water, climbing unsteadily to his feet. “Yes, this is true. Don’t forget the suit,” he says, pointing at the Big Daddy suit a few yards away from them. Dean grimaces at it and goes to shrug the damn thing on. It’s heavy as hell and it smells even worse, but Cas is right about one thing, the drill is totally handy. Once the suit is on, he can’t see all that well—his peripheral vision is shot to all hell, and he can only really see Cas through the dirty ass holes in the helmet of the suit. Not the most conducive to fighting, probably, but the suit’s got a hell of a punch, and the drill at his side doesn’t hurt things.  
  
Cas tiptoes over to him and stands in his shadow. Dean glances down at him and thinks about all the other Big Daddies with the Little Sisters on their shoulders. Oddly, that might actually be a good idea. He can’t be all that heavy in this body, and it would definitely put him out of harms way. He kneels down next to her and waves one huge hand. Fucking huge-ass suit. “Climb on,” he tells her. When Cas gives him a scandalized look, he laughs.  
  
“No seriously, get on. You’ll be safer that way.”  
  
“Dean, I—”  
  
“And don’t gimme that angel of the lord bullshit. You’re in a tiny-ass body, and I want you where I can see you.”  
  
Reluctantly, Castiel puts one tiny hand onto the suit, curling his fingers into the fabric and hoisting himself up. It’s a struggle there for a minute while Dean tries to find his balance and Cas tries to wriggle his way all the way to Dean’s shoulder, but after some wobbling, they manage—Cas seated comfortably on his shoulders in a way that isn’t going to make Dean fall on his ass.  
  
He steps into the water, and Cas squirms on his shoulder when Dean steps around a crate with a corpse crammed inside of it. The ramp isn’t too far away, just a few paces, but the way is littered with stacks of boxes—most jammed full of wine or bibles or even the occasional movie. There’s a turret stuck between more boxes at the top of the ramp, and they avoid the spray of bullets as Cas does something glowy to it and it explodes in a shower of sparks.  
  
Down some stairs and past another corpse, and the tunnel leads out into something that used to be a submarine bay, though the submarine itself is just a charred hunk of metal that’s just barely poking out of the water. He has to clamber over some rocks and bust open a chain-locked door to get into the control room, but there’s nothing there except a switch for the dead submarine. The docks past there are oddly quiet, worn wood and spilled gasoline all over the place. “You get the feeling it’s a little too quiet down here?” he whispers, stopping before the bulkhead doors to Arcadia.  
  
Cas is quiet too, thin frame ramrod stiff, and he jerks his head forward in a brief nod.  
  
“It should not be this quiet,” Cas whispers back. “Once you open those doors, be wary, Dean.”  
  
Dean steps forward and opens the door.  
  
His first impression of Arcadia is the smell—like the coastal states in the springtime.  
  
.  
  
Prometheus is one of the larger places they’ve been to, and they wander around it in horror for hours before they stumble, exhausted, into Rapture’s library. It’s extensive and gorgeous—hell, even the Doctor admits that the books they have on genetics are pretty impressive.  
  
Sam breathes in the smell of books, and the Doctor helps him drag a heap of blankets between two stacks. Together they make a little nook in the physics section, complete with a gas lamp and the blankets pulled over their knees, guns and books laid atop the fabric. For a few hours they manage to talk and read in relative quiet, keeping half an ear out for splicers.  
  
They huddle together, and when Sam’s eyes start drooping, the Doctor tells him that he’ll happily take the first watch. With the stack of books he has at his side, Sam believes him.  
  
The Doctor pats his own shoulder and returns to his book. When Sam looks at him strangely, he rolls his eyes. “You humans,” he mutters. “Always doing your best to avoid physical contact with others, even when you pretend so hard that you’re good at it.”  
  
He smiles to take the bite out of his words, and this time gestures to his lap. “I know I’m bony, but I’m a better pillow than the books.” He flips a page, idly licking his thumb as he does so.  
  
“And don’t look at me like that! Your masculinity is perfectly intact and your sexuality hardly concerns me.” He finally looks away from the book and up at Sam, pinning him with a look so severe that Sam flinches. At this, the Doctor softens. “Now, go to sleep, Sam.”  
  
Sam leans against the Doctor, just a bit.  
  
He closes his eyes.  
  
.  
  
Arcadia is not all fun and games. It is beautiful in ways that most of Rapture is not, trees and false sunlight and a genus of rose that is exquisite in its beauty. Castiel relishes the wash of oxygen, in the familiar scent of nature. All would be well, if it weren’t for the cult of splicers in the bowels of the paradise. While searching for Sam and the TARDIS, they discover the altar, an underground room full of water and so-called sacred objects.  
  
“There shall be no false gods before me,” Castiel mutters, climbing down from Dean’s shoulder to stand and tremble before the altar. There are signs of ancient gods, figures of pagan fertility etched into stone, symbols that Castiel has not seen in practice since Rome was new. It seems they worship nature above all else, and if this were any other place, Castiel would praise them for their faith. The Roman gods of old were pleasant enough, though they feared the angels above all else once Christianity gained power with the Romans. No god wants to be forgotten.  
  
It is not this that upsets him. It is the teachings etched into stone, the human bones and blood upon the altar. ‘Harness the flame,’ they preach. ‘Harness the mist.’ It is the age-old human belief that gods want destruction and sacrifices—true enough in the case of the old gods, but here in this place of destruction and sin, the people do not need more sadness.  
  
Dean watches with wide eyes, and Castiel turns his Grace on the altar.  
  
He burns it to the ground.  
  
.  
  
When Sam comes to, there is a hand stroking slowly through his hair, soft and gentle, like the man it belongs to remembers what it was like to be someones Father and Mother. He opens his eyes, dragging them open like they’re sticky with molasses, and is greeted with the dim, dank interior of the library—dust motes drifting through the light like fallen stars. The Doctor is speaking to Sam softly, his books scattered at his side as if he’s finished them all, but hadn’t wanted to wake Sam to get another.  
  
“We first met in a library, did you know?” he’s saying, those fingers slow and steady as they ease the snarls from Sam’s filthy hair. The Doctor stifles a laugh. “There’s this planet that’s one _big, ginormous_ library, you see? Since then, I hadn’t much cared for them. But there you were—this tiny little thing. I couldn’t believe that you were _Sam Winchester_ , vessel to Cas’s biggest, baddest brother. And when you spoke, you smiled, and said, ‘Thanks mister.’ It was brilliant.” Through slitted eyes, Sam can tell when the smile dims from his face. “You’re all so brilliant when you’re children. You deserve so much more than what life has given to you.”  
  
Sam stirs, and mumbles sleepily, “That was you? Bu—”  
  
The Doctor doesn’t pause in his ministrations, but nods, interrupting him with a wave of his hand. “Different face. Yep, I know.”  
  
Finally, Sam sits up, reluctantly pulling away from the Doctor’s hand. He stretches, back flush to the bookshelves behind him and arms high over his head. He watches idly as a moth lands on one of the books nearest to them, wings fluttering. He blinks, and its feathered antennae wriggles once before it takes to the air once more. “I didn’t know you could do that,” he yawns.  
  
“Time Lord,” the Doctor says, shrugging. “Bet you can’t guess my age.”  
  
Sam’s not sure if he wants to. He’s about to ask when the intercom buzzes with static—  
  
“There you are, Doctor! I’d wondered where you two had ended up. I see you’ve lost our little dove and his pet rat,” Cohen purrs. Sam tenses, slowly climbing to his feet. Suddenly, the library is no longer a comfortable place—no longer that safe haven it always was when he was younger. Now he can see the shadows clinging to the corners of the room, the faint red taint further down the aisles. The place is suddenly ominous and he doesn’t trust it. Cohen laughs at him, and says, “Oh, don’t bother getting up. You’re fine just as you are.”  
  
The Doctor presses a hand to the bookshelves behind them and uses them to help ease the way to his feet. It’s odd to see him like this, old and weary, like the old man he claims to be.  
  
“What do you want?” the Doctor sighs.  
  
The voice on the other side of the intercom laughs. “Ah, Doctor. This is what I like about you. You ask, but you already know what I’m going to say, don’t you?”  
  
Sam glares at the ceiling when the Doctor curses quietly, slumping back against the shelves—holding himself up. He speaks quickly, because he can already tell that Cohen is about to start taunting the Doctor again, teasing them, like all this is just some damn game to him. “Who gave you the demon blood, Cohen?” he asks, fists curled at his side so tightly that the knuckles have gone white.  
  
“Me? You think they gave it to little ole’ me?” Cohen laughs again, and Sam feels sick. Demon blood and genocide and it’s the apocalypse all over again, just for this one city under the ocean.  
  
“Didn’t they?”  
  
Cohen tuts at him, sounding disappointed. “You silly, silly, boy. They didn’t give it to the songbird—they gave it to the king of the jungle, the great lion, himself. They gave it to Ryan, you silly children.”  
  
The bottom drops out of his stomach and something must show on his face, because then Cohen is laughing again, giggling even as a voice speaks up from behind Sam—  
  
“Oh, and it’s been _years,_ Sammy-boy _.”_  
  
The familiarity of the voice is a punch to the gut—that smooth, smokey tenor like aged wine. The hair on the back of his neck prickles, like spiders creeping down the collar of his shirt, and his heart picks up speed, because he _does_ know that voice. He spins around, nearly knocking a few books off the shelves in his haste. Crowley looks older, gray in a shabby beard, haggard and run down—a mad glint in his eyes that wasn’t there the last time they saw him. He’s no longer that demon who reluctantly helped them overthrow Lucifer, the man who had turned and  grinned at Sam as he released his hound on the demons who’d tracked them down. This isn’t the same Crowley that gave Bobby back his legs and the location of Death himself for a kiss, then laughingly teased him about it with a picture later. No, this is an older Crowley, from god knows when—maybe years after they’ve last seen him. It makes him think of Ruby, so good and wonderful, then driven mad with power the longer she was with him.  
  
Snarling, Sam lunges for him, and it’s only the Doctor lurching forward to fist a hand in his jacket that keeps him still.  
  
Crowley grins at him.“Now, now, Samuel. Cool your feathers.”  
  
He spits at Crowley’s feet—ready to hiss and hurt until the asshole tells him where his brother is. The Doctor beat him to it though, glaring and quietly asking, “Why are you doing this?”  
  
Crowley paces closer to them, outright grinning when they edge backwards—away from him. He keeps coming until they’ve backed themselves into a corner, and he’s just feet away from them. “I had a friend, once, Doctor. And this friend—he told me so much about you. He showed me the world, and taught me how to watch it burn. There was something poetic about it—the Doctor with an angel on his shoulder and the Doctor’s greatest rival—no, not even that—his greatest _friend_ having a devil on his.”  
  
The Doctor goes white, his fist unclenching from fabric, arms going slack. He looks horror-struck and Crowley cocks a head at him, still smiling. “Isn’t that just a kicker?”  
  
The Doctor stays silent, slowly breathing in and out—as if he’s trying to calm himself.  
  
“Now, see, Harry Saxon taught me so very much,” Crowley says, reaching over to stroke a finger over the Doctor’s cheek. The Doctor flinches backwards violently, knocking his head back into a thick encyclopedia. “And one of those things that he taught me is that if you truly, _truly_ want humanity to suffer, you just have to give them the keys to their own destruction.”  
  
He smirks, eyes still on them as he walks backwards away from them, stroking his hands along the books that surround them. Above them, the intercom lets out a series of horrible sounds: a scream and a gurgle, the mad laugh of someone with evil on their mind, and Cohen, begging to know what he did wrong. Crowley gives a bow, smirking at them all the while. “Don’t you see, Doctor? As long as humanity’s around, there’s no such thing as a utopia—no paradise of love and puppies, because they will _always destroy it themselves._ Just sit back and watch, he used to tell me. Give them a match, and sit back and enjoy the show while they burn themselves alive.”  
  
The Doctor’s mouth moves soundlessly, and Sam hates this silence, wants to rip Crowley’s vocal cords out and strangle the smug bastard. When he moves forward, intent on doing just that, Crowley crooks a finger and the room around them echoes with howls. Claws click-clack on the wooden floors, and Sam can feel it’s breath on him, hot and heavy as it creeps closer. He has moments to remember his brother on his back, chest clawed open and eyes glassy and terrible before the thing is on him, the smell of blood and rot filling his nose. Sam slams back into the bookshelves, held there by an unimaginably huge paw to his chest. Crowley spares a smile for him as he struggles, and keeps on talking like he doesn’t have Sam pinned by a fucking hellhound.  
  
“You think your _Master_ didn’t understand?” he asks the Doctor, the warped smile on his face made terrible by madness. He laughs. “He understood humans better than you do, pet. I was there that day the foundation of Rapture was set, and I did just one minuscule thing. Just one little thing. I gave them that key. A pint of my blood, and Ryan took the city and made it into a cesspool. So tell me, Doctor, where’s your faith in _humans_ now?”  
  
.  
  
They find a bathysphere just outside of Arcadia, floating in a small pool of water in a large hole in the center of the room. There’s a ladder leading down to it, and it takes a few minutes of navigation to get Dean into it—in the end, he has to take off the suit and leave it in a pile on one side of the bathysphere while he and Castiel huddle together on the other side.  
  
“I don’t see why we can’t just leave the damn thing here,” he says, glaring at the suit.  
  
Castiel fumbles with a knob on the control panel and sets the location to a place called ‘Prometheus.’ It boasts having the largest library in Rapture, and if Castiel knows the Doctor and Sam, that’s where they’ll be. “We may have a use for it, Dean,” he sighs, jolting a bit when the door snaps shut and the contraption jolts into motion.  
  
“We do not. It’s hard as hell to work a gun in it, it smells like shit, and I’m getting knots in my back just trying to move around in that thing.”  
  
“Nevertheless, Dean. I believe we should bring it with us.”  
  
Dean rolls his eyes at him. Mutters, “I think you just like getting free rides all the time. The Dean Winchester taxi service: next stop—hell.”  
  
Castiel glares at him. Oddly, it’s apparently more intimidating coming from as Dean puts it, a ‘pint-sized little brat’ than it is coming from Jimmy Novak. “I can walk. I believe it was you who insisted on carrying me, despite my protests that I would be fine on the ground.”  
  
Dean rolls his eyes. “As if.”  
  
“Don’t be a child, Dean.”  
  
“Takes one to know one.”  
  
The bathysphere falls silent, and they don’t speak for several moments.  
  
“Do you really think your body will be okay, Cas? I mean, not that you aren’t a fantastic little monster girl, but I really don’t enjoy the idea of watching that little girl burn when it gets to be too much for her.”  
  
Castiel settles down to the floor, watching as a whale passes just outside of their sphere, singing a greeting to them as it goes. He looks up at Dean and gestures for him to sit as well. “I’m sure it will be fine, Dean. We know its location. We can come back for it with the TARDIS if need be.”  
  
“But—”  
  
Castiel looks at him curiously. “Why does this concern you so much?”  
  
Dean looks both sheepish and defensive, which according to the Doctor (and Donna for that matter) means that he’s trying hard not to have a great big chick moment. “Maybe I’ll just miss that trench coat of yours,” he says. “It’ll take a little too long for the squirt to grow into it, and we don’t have that kind of time.”  
  
Castiel considers. He’d promised Jimmy, but if need be, it was a possibility. The protection of the Winchesters has always made Castiel do stupid things, so it wouldn’t be the first time he’s broken a promise on their behalf. “Claire Novak is still alive, if need be. I believe she turned fourteen three weeks ago.”  
  
Dean laughs at him. “Three weeks ago, she wasn’t _alive_ , Cas. Hell, three weeks ago Marilyn Monroe died.”  
  
Castiel glares at him, resisting the urge to fold his arms over his chest. “In your time, Dean Winchester. She turned fourteen three weeks ago in _your_ time.”  
  
The sphere goes silent again, and Castiel watches as Dean tracks a jellyfish’s progress through the water. Dean smiles as a fish brushes up against the glass, darting away again when Dean reaches a fingertip towards it. “I’ll give Ryan one thing—just the one that he did right. This place could have been beautiful.”  
  
Castiel nods and Dean glances over at him. “Hey Cas? I’m sorry for everything. But man, you can’t keep tearing off looking for God, if it’s gonna get you stuck in situations like this one.”  
  
Castiel frowns.  
  
“He is my Father, Dean. I cannot give up on Him.”  
  
Dean sighs and turns his whole body so that he’s facing Castiel, legs folded cross-legged beneath him.“Yeah, but see, there’s this thing you’ve gotta know about deadbeat dads.” He takes a large breath and lets it out again. “Sure, yours is kind of the biggest jackass of them all, but the thing is, when you really need them, they always come back for their kids.”  
  
“Dean, I do not understand this belief. Your father left you to fend for your brother time and time again.”  
  
Dean turns his gaze to his lap, eyes sad, and Castiel regrets his comment at once. After a moment, Dean looks back up, determined. “Yeah, he did. But I’ve been thinking—being a dad isn’t the easiest job. And sure, he could’ve done better by us, but he did the best he could. Would things have been different if mom was alive? You bet your lily-white ass they would. But he did his best, and he was always there when it counted. That’s what matters. Like how your Dad was there for you at Chuck’s place, and in the graveyard. He may be a dick, but Cas, that right there shows that he loves you.”  
  
“Dean...”  
  
“You’ve got a lot of people on your side, Cas. And after that shit with Crowley, I want you to know—if you ever need me, _ever,_ I’ll be there. I don’t care if you want to happily leave me with my golden retriever and white picket fence. Hell Cas, after I’m dead and gone, as long as I make it to that weird-ass heaven of yours, you got a question? You pop right in.”  
  
Castiel flinches. “I couldn’t—”  
  
The sphere is slowing now, rising to dock in another part of this godforsaken city. Dean smiles and pats him on the knee. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, Cas,” he grins. Affectionately, he threads a few fingers into Masha’s hair, ruffling it. He looks faintly embarrassed, red across the bridge of his nose, but it doesn’t stop him from continuing—“You need someone, I’m there for you. Because that’s what Winchesters do for family.”  
  
The doors hiss open, and Castiel smiles.  
  
.  
  
“How could you do this to Cas?” Sam asks, chest heaving as he struggles to breathe under the hounds weight. The Doctor watches the demon before them sneer, and his hearts pound double-time.  
  
“Cas?” it says, laughing as Sam gasps in pain. “That little bundle of feathers? Whatever heart I have left couldn’t give a damn about that bird brain. If our little angel was stupid enough to get himself nabbed by Ryan and his gang, that is in no way my fault.”  
  
The Doctor flinches when the demon—Crowley—looks his way. “Was there ever a Canton Everett Delaware III?” he asks quietly, his hearts still stinging from the bite of Crowley’s words. From the knowledge that the Master taught such a creature to be even more brutal. His Koschei, so mad and lonely in the end that he turned to a demon for friendship.  
  
The thing shrugs. “Oh, there was. You knew him. I didn’t even take him until a few years afterward. He’s very much dead up here, though,” it says, waving a finger at his skull.  
  
The Doctor shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath. It’s easier this way, to not look at the creature and see Canton staring back at him with a sneer on his face. “You’ve murdered my friend—you wear his face as if it belongs to you. You stood by as Castiel was tortured. You’ve stolen my TARDIS, and you’ve let a city rot. How do you really think that this is going to turn out for you, _Crowley?”_  
  
It smiles at him. “Doctor, I don’t really _care_ how this turns out. I’ve only stuck around this long to meet you. My work here is done, darling, can’t you see that?”  
  
.  
  
Castiel stares blankly at the pink wall that the corpse is propped against, and feels suddenly, violently ill. Syringes decorate its decomposing body, and there’s a message written in blood on the wall behind him—as if the little girl who had done this was playing at fingerpaints, “Mister, mister, won’t you come play with me?”  
  
Dean is the one that pulls him away, gripping his wrist as tightly as he can and pulling him out of the room—out of the _Little Wonders Educational Facilities._ Castiel has never wanted to destroy a human city before, as dank and dark a place as it may have been. It matters not what rat hides in the city’s bowels, because there has always been at least one person worth saving in the place.  
  
Here, though? Castiel wants to tear Rapture apart brick-by-brick. He wants to destroy the glass of the tunnels, let the cracks spiderweb outwards until the ocean rushes in to cleanse the place of its vermin. Here there are no people left to save, because the few who were worth it are already dead, like Sam’s Langford—the nice lady who’d come into his cell and reattached his hands so he wouldn’t have to suffer.  
  
“The library’s this way, Cas,” Dean tells him, pointing down a corridor opposite them. Castiel doesn’t want to find the Doctor right now. He doesn't want the Doctor to see him, because the Doctor alone could read the anger in his eyes.  
  
.  
  
Castiel should have realized it was Crowley. He should have taken care of the demon before, when he had all the souls of the damned inside of him. Before Crowley was allowed to hurt anyone else.  
  
Crowley takes one look at him and flashes his teeth, snaps the leash keeping the beast tethered to him, and the abomination digs his claws in before it lets go, slinking past Castiel, growling and flashing its teeth at him as it passes—its tremendous, heaving flanks towering a good foot over Masha’s head. Sam slumps to the floor, breathing heavy, and Dean lets out a wounded noise behind him.  
  
Crowley creeps closer to them, turning his back on Sam and the Doctor. “Ah, Cas!” he grins. “How’s our little dove doing? I’ve gotta say, not appreciating the new meat-suit quite as much. She lacks those soulful blue eyes of yours.”  
  
Castiel reaches for his Grace, but before he can act Crowley has an arm around the Doctor’s throat, whispering something in his ear. The Doctor’s eyes are wide and furious, but like this, Castiel can’t reach Crowley without hurting his friend. “Oh Cas,” Crowley purrs. “You pitiful little sap, you. Still looking for Daddy? Well, pet, I can tell you one thing: he sure as hell isn’t here.”  
  
“And you, my darling Doctor, you thought you could save them, didn’t you?” He shakes the Doctor, rattling his skull, laughing when the Doctor chokes. “Even as our boys here plugged them all full of holes, you still thought you could save this pitiful excuse for a paradise.”  
  
“Let him go, Crowley,” Dean growls, hands tightening on the shotgun in his hands.  
  
Crowley’s laugh turns deranged, mad as all of Rapute’s inhabitants. He presses a sloppy kiss to the Doctor’s cheek, purring, “That was from your dearly departed Koschei, Doctor. He sends his love, I’m sure.” With another laugh, he shoves the Doctor towards them, hard enough that he stumbles, going down hard on one knee. “See,” he grins, shaking a finger at them. “This is why I like you little grease monkies. You’re all so _lively_ , even when it’s clear that you’ve lost.”  
  
Castiel glares up at Crowley then turns, offering a hand to Doctor and pulling him to his feet.  
  
Crowley rolls his eyes at them. “Leave this place. You’ll find your TARDIS when you find Cohen’s corpse. But I promise you, there’s nothing left here to save. Have fun running, boys.”  
  
Then he’s gone, black smoke in the air and a dead body on the floor.  
  
The room is tight with tension, and even as Dean rushes to Sam’s side, patting him down to make sure he’s all right, the air begins to ring with the shrieks of splicers with their sights set on blood.  
  
They run.  
  
.  
  
They find Cohen in Arcadia.  
  
The escape from Prometheus isn’t easy, with Sam supported between Dean and the Doctor, running awkwardly down the halls as they take turns holding a cloth to his chest—making a valiant attempt to staunch the blood flow from the holes that the beast had ripped into his chest. It’s difficult though, practically carrying Sam down the hall, his bulk dragging them down. The splicers have been steadily gaining on them, a giggling twelve year old with half of her face bloated and disfigured leading the charge.  
  
In the end it’s Cohen who saves them, telling them to follow his voice—follow as it weakly echoes through the corridors, telling them to find him with the trees, and asking them to bring him a sun.  
  
“What I wouldn’t give to see the sun one last time,” he breaths, voice crackling with static over the intercom. Dean curses under his breath, staggering as he hands Sam over to the Doctor as they pass through the bulkhead into Arcadia. Castiel buys them time, darting between splicers, tiny bare feet splashing through puddles as he presses little girl hands to their chests and tears out their souls.  
  
The Doctor turns his back to them for a moment to help Sam through the door, and behind him, Castiel _shrieks,_ the lights above him trembling when his true voice bleeds through. He goes to look, shuddering at the sight of blood soaking the front of the little girl’s dress. Dean curses and fires three rounds into the closest splicers, gore splashing him as he scoops Castiel into his arms, hanging on tightly as he charges through the door after them.  
  
“Close it!” Castiel frantically cries, voice bird-high with pain. The lights tremble and crack, the door slamming shut on its own, the power of Castiel’s words and fury ringing through the air like a crack of lightning.  
  
When they finally find Cohen, he’s holding entrails in with a fist, singing a somber tune that the Doctor doesn’t know the name of.  
  
“Ah, the little moths,” he whispers, blood on his lips. “Your box is just past that door. I would see you to it, but I believe you’d rather I took care of your other problem first.”  
  
He nods at the door behind them, where the screams and snarls grow louder as the creatures pound on the steel. Dean looks furious, holding Castiel in his arms as the angel bleeds into the soil.  
  
The Doctor stares at Cohen. “Stop it, Dean,” he says, when Dean looks like he’s about to assault the man. Sam glares at the door weakly, and when he holds a hand towards the door, there’s lightning and fire swirling around his fingertips.  
  
“We have to get going, Doctor,” Sam hisses, using his other hand to keep the slowly reddening cloth pressed to his chest.  
  
The Doctor looks at Cohen, bleeding out and pitiful, and thinks about what the demon said. There’s nothing left here to save, but closure... he can give this man that. He remembers a boy on the docks, grinning and asking the Doctor to watch him shine. Redemption, he thinks, and crouches down before the madman.  
  
.  
  
"You could have been so brilliant. You would have shined so brightly," says the Doctor when they last meet, beneath the brilliant trees of Arcadia, twenty years after their first meeting. Sander is not quite old, still young enough to feel the gravitational pull of this man, a star in his own right. He grins, playful and charismatic, though the boyhood has long since faded from his face. Instead there are laugh lines, crows feet, and madness in his eyes.  
  
"Ah, but my dear Doctor, my clever little star," he sighs, smearing his blood across the Doctor's cheek with a single press of a kiss, featherlight and soft as rose petals—ever the entertainer. "I think you'll find that I _was_ brilliant. I shined, and I shined, but no one was there to bear witness." He wets his lips, and tastes his own blood there. "Doctor, won't you stay to see me shine one last time?"  
  
The demon's splicers spill into the room, and somewhere, that wretched angel is telling his star to run. A kiss to his brow, featherlight, an apology, and the Doctor is gone. Sander laughs, and waits three heartbeats, long enough for his star to escape to the doors, long enough for that beautiful blue box to fade out of existence. He curls his fingers into impossible grass, and wonders if in another life, he could have gone with them. If he’d stayed far from Rapture and let his mind bloom instead, maybe then the Doctor would have taken him to see the universe. He laughs weakly, and wishes he could see the sun one last time.  
  
He presses a button and shines.  
  
Big finish, take a bow.  
  
.  
  
The interior of the TARDIS is the best thing Dean has seen in weeks. He slides down to the floor, still clutching Cas to his chest, and laughs when long brown hair half out of its ponytail tickles his nose. Castiel looks up at him, relieved and concerned in equal measures, eyes still bright with pain. Dean laughs and laughs, and holds Cas tight,  his shoulders shaking.  
  
Sam looks at him like he’s gone crazy, and the Doctor is warily creeping around the controls as the TARDIS groans and thrashes around the vortex.  
  
Dean laughs and presses a kiss to the wall next to his head, because she’s the most lovely thing he’s ever seen, and it’s funny, it really is, because he’s sure as hell not afraid of flying anymore.  
  
.  
  
Masha Lutz’s hair looks odd in the sunlight—the gray of her skin somber rather than horrifying, the yellow glow of her eyes soft rather than eerie.  
  
There’s nothing to be done with the bloodstained dress, but it’s apparently horrifying enough that River takes one look at the form he is in and pulls Castiel to the side. She bathes him, setting him down in a jacuzzi sized bathtub the TARDIS pulls out of nowhere and scrubs at his ankles and between his toes until all the blood and grime has been washed away. She washes Castiel’s hair, tugging the ribbon out of it and kneading shampoo into Castiel’s scalp until the smell is gone. Afterwards, she takes him to the first wardrobe and doesn’t even listen to Castiel when he protests that really, he’s utterly fine.  
  
When she marches him back into the control room, Dean does a double take and Sam laughs himself hoarse in the hallway. The trousers fit oddly, but Castiel assumes it’s because they’re from the 1920s rather than because there’s an issue with the body he’s in. The shirt is crisp, and clings to Masha’s frame loosely—but it’s the miniature tie around his neck that is probably causing Sam’s laughter. It isn’t quite the suit and trenchcoat that he’d grown accustomed to, but it’s close enough that Castiel feels at ease, with Masha’s feet shoved into tiny loafers and an ill fitting suit wrapped around his skin.  
  
When the Doctor sees him, he smiles softly, and immediately goes back into the wardrobe. They listen to him rummage for a few minutes before he emerges, smiling triumphantly, a pair of tiny braces in his hands.  
  
He fastidiously clips them into place, snapping the elastic over Castiel’s shoulders once they’re secure. He grins some more, and finally Dean interrupts with a snort. “You’re corrupting him with suspenders? Really?”  
  
Castiel looks over to him and grins, because he learned quickly that in this form, it _terrifies_ Dean. Perhaps Dean’s sense of humor is finally rubbing off on him, because he finds it extremely amusing. “Jimmy Novak wore suspenders, Dean.”  
  
As Dean splutters, River cocks her head at him. “Really?” she breathes, dragging the syllables, intrigue bleeding into her tone.  
  
“Not your kind of suspenders,” Sam laughs. “Braces—Jimmy Novak wore braces, not a garter belt.” Sam grins at her, taking a sip of the tea that she presses into his hands.  
  
“Oh English, you wonderful language,” Dean says, rolling his eyes skyward.  
  
The Doctor strokes a hand across Castiel’s cheek to get his attention, still crouched to his level, nearly sitting on the floor. “How’s she doing?” he asks.  
  
Castiel probes inwards and flinches at what he sees. “She is not well. Her body will not hold up much longer, I fear.”  
  
Dean glances away from bickering with River and Sam, looking concerned. “But your body—”  
  
The Doctor rolls his eyes at Castiel and speaks without turning to face Dean. “What exactly are you inside of right now, Dean Winchester?” he asks, tone patient, used to the humans having to take some time to play catch up.  
  
Dean’s eyes go wide and Castiel smiles. “I told you,” he points out sagely. “We have all the time we could possibly want.”  
  
.  
  
Being back in Jimmy’s skin is truly like coming home.  
  
.  
  
The first thing he does is kiss Dean.  
  
He’s been waiting long enough.  
  
.  
  
The second thing he does is eradicate the worm, ridding the girl of the demon blood in her system before she even wakes fully, slumped to the ground in Castiel’s miniature suit. They watch as her skin blushes pink, holding their breaths as the Doctor does his best to telepathically remove the majority of her mental conditioning. The cracks in her mind mend, and as they do so, her will becomes stronger.  
  
When Masha finally opens her eyes, they are blue and curious.  
  
“Who are you?” she asks, head cocked to one side—gaze sharp.  
  
“We have ourselves a mini-Castiel,” River giggles, Sam joining her after a few seconds of scrutinizing the child. Castiel is not sure of how to feel about this, and judging by his face, neither does Dean. The Doctor just looks at her fondly though, bending down to her level the same way he had with Castiel. “That we do,” he whispers, playfully tousling the girls hair.  
  
She giggles.  
  
.  
  
It isn’t easy, and it sure as hell isn’t perfect. For weeks, Masha won’t step foot outside of the TARDIS, curling up on cots with Castiel to sleep. The mental conditioning is slow to fade from her mind, sloughing away like dead skin as the months pass. Her first outing is to Bobby’s, where Castiel and the Doctor hold her hands as they walk between all the cars. At first, she’s shy around Bobby, hiding behind Castiel’s knees when he gets too close. She acts the same way with Amy and Rory, and it takes some time before she starts to climb into Grandpa Bobby’s lap for storytime, or comfortable enough around Amy to tug on her orange hair.  
  
Raising her isn’t the easiest, especially with a family this big.  
  
When she gets older, Masha will steal the TARDIS a bit too often for comfort and come back weeks later with a years growth of hair spilling out of her ponytail and her nails chipped, grease streaked across her face and glasses slightly askew. When the Doctor asks where she’s been, she’ll shrug and ask him how his visit was with Papa Dean and Daddy Cas. She’ll be a right pain in the ass, but she’ll be clever about it—the Doctor’s smarts and the Winchester ability to get herself into trouble. Luckily enough, she also picked up River’s ability to get herself in and out of trouble faster than one can blink. She’ll wear ill fitting suits, crooked ties, and suspenders for as long as she knows how to run, though she trades out the loafers for a pair of sneakers the day she turns thirteen.  
  
While she’s young she’ll spend weekends with the Winchesters, reluctantly letting Sam feed her salad and take her to get her first pair of glasses—learning how to properly care for a car with Dean, tucked under the Impala with him, and later, helping him polish the knives—and with Castiel? Well, with Castiel she learns languages, fluent in Enochian by ten years and in half a dozen other human languages by the time she’s twelve. He takes her flying, and she can’t see his wings, but she has vague memories of his Grace, burning brightly in that terrible place.  
  
With the Ponds, she does normal little kid things, parks and feeding ducks and helping Auntie Amy tinker with a new perfume. Uncle Rory tells her stories of the Doctor and the adventures that they’d had before she came to them, and she giggles when he tickles her during the scary parts.  
  
It isn’t the perfect fairytale ending, not the way that her childhood is half hazy memories of roses and ivy and angels sleeping on marble floors. Mama River still isn’t home enough and the Doctor still gets them into too much trouble. It’s Winchester luck, he always told her, that knack for getting into trouble. She won’t judge them for it, because they’re family, and as far as she’s concerned, they’re just as much her parents as River and the Doctor are. She’s a Winchester just as much as she is a Pond or a Song, just as she once was a Lutz, before they stole her away from the necropolis beneath the ocean.  
  
When she is eleven, she changes her name to Toni, because Masha Lutz died in a graveyard of memories in 1948. On paper, she is Toni Winchester-Song, born on March 25th, 2001 in Lawrence, Kansas. Her birth certificate has no biological mother or father listed, because she has no way of making society accept that she has two mothers and five fathers, one of which is an alien.  
  
When she is twenty-two, Castiel finds God, and introduces Him to her as Grandpa.  
  
Predictably, He spoils her.  
  
Sometimes her family are thieves, sometimes they’re liars. Sometimes they’re such hypocrites that she wants to explode, and sometimes they aren’t there when she needs them. But they are her family, perfect in their imperfection, and she loves them.  
  
Endings are never _really_ the end in her experience. Life goes on, and with it, so does the story.  
  
Just maybe not quite this one.


End file.
